Promo Profile: We Are From LA

They’re not, of course, they’re from Paris, but the directing duo responsible for Pharrell’s Happy creates work with a universal appeal. David Knight feels the joy

It’s London in late February. It’s freezing outside and in the office where We Are From LA are working on a new commercial, the wall heater is blowing out cold air at them. It’s enough to have most creative types in tears, but not these guys. Although they are in chilly London in body, they’re somewhere else in spirit.

Two weeks previously the duo – Clement Durou and Pierre Dupaquier – were in LA picking up the award for Best Music Video at the 2015 Grammys, for their video for Pharrell Williams’ Happy. Not just any song, and not just any video. In its standard version the video, featuring Pharrell performing in various locations in LA, together with equally joyful contributions from other performers of all ages, shapes and sizes – has amassed over 600 million YouTube views.

But the true wonder of the Happy video is to be found with the interactive version. A visitor to 24hoursofhappy.com can explore over 350 performances of the song accessed from a 24-hour clock – with the times of the performances approximately matching the time at which the user views them – and then share their experience. Figures for views and shares on 24hoursofhappy.com suggest that it’s the world’s most popular interactive music video site. And now the first ever 24-hour video has become the first interactive video to win a Grammy.

This isn’t their first work to break records and post awe-inspiring stats. Their cute Evian commercial Baby & Me – in which a group of young adults find their infant selves reflected back at them in mirrored windows on a city street, copying their dance moves – was (according to YouTube and Adweek) the world’s most viewed and shared commercial of 2013. YouTube rated it the most popular ad shown in the UK that year, and now it holds the record of being the most-shared baby-featuring ad of all time.

It’s not easy doing happy

All evidence suggests that WAFLA really do know how to make people happy – lots of people. Which is good news for their latest clients Converse and Air France. The new spot for the latter, France Is In The Air, is a beautifully designed and choreographed affair in which the experience of flying is expressed, in cool Gallic style, as a joyful ride on a swing. It looks like it’s going to be another crowd-pleaser. When shots meets We Are From LA the two new ads are days from launch, and the directors are delighted to have won the Grammy – and joined a stellar rollcall of previous winners, including David Fincher, Spike Jonze, Mark Romanek and Tony Kaye – but also amused when they recall their difficulties making the Happy video. “It was hard to get people involved,” reveals Dupaquier. “When we told them we were making a 24-hour video, the reaction was: ‘Okay… bye!’” he laughs. “In LA everybody was telling us the same thing,” Durou continues. “‘It’s very… ambitious’ and ‘I’m not sure if I’m free…’” More laughter. “It wasn’t easy.” Filmed over just two days Pharrell had to perform the song 24 times – with a different location and outfit. They then spent eight more days filming everyone else, from professional dancers, to handicapped people, from very young to extremely old. Mostly unknowns, but also film star Steve Carell, Pharrell’s celeb friends Jamie Foxx and Magic Johnson and the ‘minions’ from the film Despicable Me – the song first appeared on the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack.

The casting and logistical challenges were immense – and it’s safe to say that it could only have been made in LA. “In LA you have people who are policeman-slash-actor, doctor-slash-actor,” notes Durou. “So when you give them four minutes in the spotlight, in front of the camera, and they know that will end up in a Pharrell video, they give you 100 per cent energy.”

Of course, We Are From LA are actually from France. Both growing up in the Paris suburbs, they met about a decade ago at a Parisian art school and have been working together ever since. On graduation they joined ad agency La Chose as a junior creative team, where they worked on major campaigns for brands such as IKEA.

But after a smooth move from art school into advertising, they began to get frustrated, seeing their ideas watered down beyond recognition, or not getting made at all. That encouraged them to start making their own films in their own time. The first results were a couple of entertaining cut-and-paste animated music videos – a fan video for Kanye West’s Power, and then a video for French artist Yelle – both featuring the copious use of cutout stock images. These videos got them noticed, and they then made an impressive entrance into the burgeoning field of interactive marketing with a project for the Cassius track I Love You So. An accompanying app featured a selection of mouths singing the song; users were invited to hold their phones in front of their mouths and film themselves singing along.

Watch with your eyes closed

Though the duo’s own video for I Love You So proved less successful than some of the risqué fan videos it spawned, they were still emboldened to take the risky step of leaving their agency jobs to become full-time directors. “In France you have a lot of job security, so when you quit your job, everybody thinks you’re making a big mistake,” says Durou. So they were making a statement when they adopted the name of We Are From LA. Even with a possible element of irony involved, it reflected where their heads were at. “We decided to change the way we work, so we wanted to change it all, even the name. It was a way to reset our lives,” says Durou. “And for us, America is a place where everything is possible,” adds Dupaquier. “You can do stuff quicker there than you can in Europe. And all our references were American pop culture.”

Born in the mid-80s, their heroes were the great American mainstream filmmakers of their childhoods – Robert Zemeckis, Chris Columbus and, the daddy of them all, Spielberg. Their upbringing in the French suburbs had more in common with those of the kids in Spielberg’s movies than anything they saw in French films. “We used to say that we lived in The Goonies – the French Goonies,” says Durou.

Signing to French production company Iconoclast, their first post-agency job was another interactive – and remarkably counter-intuitive –project for the track Cover Your Eyes, by French electro-rock band The Shoes, in which viewers are required to actually cover their eyes if they want to hear the track. “We wanted to make a video that you don’t want to see,” says Dupaquier. On the video’s website, users are invited to use their webcams to get involved, the video then plays but without any sounds apart from strange voices and rumblings. In order to listen to the song the webcam must detect the user has covered their eyes; once done the track starts. “It was like we were saying, ‘We have footage, but it’s disturbing. So cover your eyes and just listen to the music.’” Requiring complicated web development, the project went on to win the Innovation Award at the UK Music Video Awards in 2011.

“Our generation love to play video games, to interact with stuff,” says Dupaquier on the attractions of interactive. “We like to have one experience, and then another different one.” Durou adds: “When you are on the internet now, and you’re looking at a video, you’re still clicking. The idea is to accept you will click, but let’s make sure you stay clicking in our video.” In fact, WAFLA have still only made one entirely non-interactive music video. True Romance from the British indie band Citizens! features couples engaging in public displays of affection in highly unusual, and sometimes dangerous, situations – such as while being arrested or on the edge of a high building. The inspiration came from the famous photograph of a couple lying in a passionate clinch during a riot, which is recreated at the start of the video. “We wanted to do a real-life music video,” says Durou. “If this image is real, with a couple kissing during a riot, then all the other couples kissing each other could be real too.”

With such sunny positivity it’s not surprising that their progress in commercials has involved youth-oriented brands, and quirky but strong visual ideas. For Eastpak’s Spak, Eastpak-wearing youths leap off a rooftop in a human Tetris Facebook advergame; and for French Virgin Radio’s Louder Is Better, an old woman berating some kids in a car starts to look like she’s singing the lyrics to a tune on the radio station.

Hot babies in Buenos Aires

In the winter of 2012-13 they made their major breakthrough in commercials, with Evian’s Baby & Me ad. The script, out of BETC in Paris, required them to make babies copy the movements of eight adults. That turned out to be a painfully difficult task, magnified by problems on the shoot. They claim that at no point did they think they were making a viral sensation. “Everything was really hard to do,” recalls Dupaquier. “Filming babies is horrible – and we filmed a lot. And we shot the ad in Buenos Aires, in the middle of summer. It was so hot for the dancers to dance. By the end we didn’t imagine the commercial would be so huge.”

The babies’ dances were actually created by the real dancers wearing fat suits. But all the hard work paid off with a beautifully executed, spectacularly uplifting ad. Released in April 2013, by the end of the year Baby & Me had been viewed 63 million times on YouTube. And the good karma kept coming. Shortly after its launch, discussions with their friend, the French music video director Yoann Lemoine, resulted in them starting production on 24 Hours Of Happy.

WAFLA reveal that the 24-hour music video was something they had proposed as part of other previous treatments, and been rejected every time. “The first idea was to do a 24-hour music video on a rooftop in Greenwich in England, on the Meridian,” says Durou. Lemoine – who under the moniker Woodkid, is also a successful musician in his own right – was working as creative director for Pharrell and suggested they propose the 24-hour concept for Happy. “A few days after we sent Pharrell the treatment, he said: ‘Okay, let’s go,’” Dupaquier recalls. “One week later we were in LA.” 

They soon realised the scale of the challenge. With the track being exactly four minutes long, they needed 360 performances to fill 24 hours – and figured out they didn’t have time to shoot anything twice. But Pharrell’s own performances – delivered impeccably in one take time and again – would provide the project’s pivotal backbone. “Pharrell was very engaged in the project,” says Durou. “He knew it wasn’t possible to do it two or three times, and he arrived on the set with perfect energy.” It was the same for all the other talent, who were told to keep moving, keep dancing, and have fun. “We told them: ‘If you fall on the floor, or if you die… whatever happens, you will be in the video for four minutes.’” Nobody died, but some people fell – and it all stayed in there. “The real idea was to show that it’s possible for everybody to dance,” adds Durou, “even if you’re an old woman, or handicapped. There are people in wheelchairs, people who are 300 kilos, people who are skinny… It’s very universal.” The duo also ended up walking 100km over 10 days – backwards through the streets of Los Angeles, creating quite a scene. Durou recalls: “Thousands of people in LA watched this crazy thing of one person in front of the camera, and 20 people walking backwards watching the mobile monitors – and singing and clapping, communicating energy.”

The DP on the project, Alexis Zabe, mostly shot with vintage anamorphic lenses and used available light for both day and night shoots. The video also has a widescreen look which exudes warmth. Shooting in LA certainly helped – but WAFLA reject the idea that the gorgeous look of the Happy video is intrinsic to their own style. “It’s funny because for us, we don’t have a specific aesthetic,” says Durou. “We try to do the most universal aesthetic we can. Our biggest reference is Spielberg, and Spielberg is always thinking about how to communicate to everybody. And our choice is always about how to speak to everybody.”

Unhappy in Ukraine

That appeal to the universal has certainly had some unexpected outcomes – like the Happy video being adopted and reworked by protesters during the Ukrainian revolution in Kiev last year, and protesters against repression in Iran – a political dimension that the directors never dreamed would happen. And they declare that their new commercials for Air France and Converse see them move into new directions, and doing new things. “We were curious to do something we hadn’t done before so for Converse we shot only feet,” says Dupaquier, referring to the spot Made By You, which highlights the individuality of Converse wearers as they describe themselves while their actions – captured from knee level and below – speak louder than words.

The Air France ad was a much bigger project and “totally different from the other projects we’ve done,” according to Durou. It entailed the creation of an airplane cabin in a studio, with all the cast – including, at one point, child ballerinas – on swings. It’s a triumph of design and choreography that has actually played a part in their relatively low output as commercials directors, since they’ve been extending their range, doing fashion photography for Air France’s inflight publication, and the French magazine Jalouse. Occasionally returning to agencies as freelance creatives, they say that their Evian and Pharrell work means there is extra pressure on them now. “We have to find good ideas and good projects,” says Durou.

But as directors, We Are From LA are in no real danger of losing their ability to generate delight.