Budding DJs of the world unite! This week's Hotshot see's Warp director Marco Puig team up with Framestore to animate some block rocking beats for the intro sequence of Freestyle Games' forthcoming release, DJ Hero.
Set to the mashed-up strains of Justice's thumping album opener Genesis and Dizzee Rascal's Fix Up Look Sharp, the film shows an aspiring DJ break away from a crowd of revellers to jump aboard a gigantic stylus ripping up the landscape of a vinyl city. Mental? Definitely. Pulse quickening? Certainly. Toe tapping? For sure.
shots.net spoke to Simon Whalley, Framestore's exec producer on the project, to find out more about the show-stopping collaboration with Warp director Marco Puig.
The process of getting the spot off the ground was a bit unsual wasn't it?
Yes, this was a different scenario for the Framestore commercials department, but something we have been doing in film recently. With the DJ Hero project, we had an existing relationship with Freestyle Games and so they commissioned us to produce the intro movie. We then went to our good friends at Warp Films (who we have a strong collaborative relationship with) and asked for a cool talented director who could come up with a cracking idea. The producer there, Diarmid Scrimshaw, suggested Marco Puig.
We had a fantastic crew and a huge amount of creative freedom on this one. As long as Jamie Jackson at Freestyle was happy, we could do whatever we liked (although he later told me he had a hell of job convincing Activision that a giant needle exploding and falling on thousands of people would definitely feel like a non-threatening and fun thing to happen!).
How long was spent in the conceptual stage before the creation of the spot was started?
We were in the conceptual stage for about two weeks, getting the treatment done and then the storyboarding and concept artwork. Once we had all the boards done, we created an edit of those boards. That was done by Simon Hargood at The Quarry.
Interestingly, the idea that finally became the film wasn't Marco's first. He came in to see us and pitched a totally different idea, that we all really liked, but perhaps was a little more obvious. We got a phone call from a very excited Marco later that day after he'd talked us through his initial treatment saying to scrap that one and that he's got a better idea involving people riding a giant evil needle through a landscape of vinyl. From that moment, we knew we were on to a winner.
How did the relationship between Marco and Framestore work?
The relationship with Marco was really good. Whilst were in the early stages of developing DJ Hero, we were working on the promo for Girls Aloud (Untouchable), that Marco also directed. In fact, I remember Marco was storyboarding DJ Hero scenes whilst sitting in the Smoke suite as we were compositing Girls Aloud. Even though we were doing two jobs at the same time, and had to manage that time carefully, it really helped to be involved in both, as we got to spend more time with each other and build on that relationship.
As soon as Girls Aloud delivered we went immediately on to DJ Hero. Marco bonded well with the 3D team, and they enjoyed his approach. Interestingly, as Marco had never directed animation before, he came at it from a slightly different angle to an animation director. There's a shot in the film of the truck with the camera swinging around 180 degrees. This was a really hard shot, as there were crowds in the trailer and a load of hi-res detail, making it particularly tricky to create. Diarmid Harrison-Murray, our VFX Supervisor, said that anyone who had done animation before probably wouldn't attempt to do such a crackers shot in CG. Our guys found all of this quite liberating. And labour intensive.
How long did it take to complete?
Once we had a locked storyboard, and an edit of those boards, we had 15 weeks to create the film. We started by creating a CG animatic of the film, placing all of the cameras in the scenes. This was a really quick way for Marco to be able to see the shots, move the cameras around and help us map out the film without rendering any hi-res images.
What were the main challenges with the spot?
The entire film was a huge technical undertaking for Framestore. Getting the look right was key, and Diarmid absolutely nailed it with his fusion of hyper-real and photo-real. Also, the time span with which we had to create the film was very tight indeed. The film needed to be very pacey and exciting, which meant a lot of shots. We couldn't really take any shortcuts, so it was mostly a case of working long hours and having a good sized team - we had 25 3D artists, producing 76 shots in HD.
Apart from the central work of rebuilding and polishing the 5 main DJ characters (Cooky, Grand Master Flash, HHH, Itch and Shadow), there was also a plethora of props, vehicles, environments, and other characters to create - the final scene alone boasting 4800 individual dancing DJs. For that we did a mo-cap shoot with some super cool breakdancers that Diarmid Scrimshaw from Warp sorted for us, such as B-Boy Mouse and Pole.
Another major challenge was the animation. The characters involved appear in the game, but we had to give them character and life outside of the game environment. The real DJ Shadow was particularly cool, and wanted to be a 'Dr Strange' like character. When we showed him the final film he said "This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Crazy. Insane. Phenomenal." So that was great, and the animators were thrilled with that.
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