A few issues ago, shots featured French animation collective UFO as new directors. The Holograms are a graphic animation team within UFO, and they've just completed a geometric gem of a promo for redhead poster La Roux. We caught up with them to find out about green screen, travelators and the modern day Alice in Wonderland.

Check out the promo here


What was the main inspiration behind the look of the video?
We are a very design-based collective and wanted to source a lot of designs that were also inspired by geometric shapes, simple forms and vibrant primary/neon colours. As part of the treatment we showed a piece of work we did for MTV. It shows bright graphic forms animating in live action and we built on this idea to include La Roux and her aesthetic. We designed a chair specifically in geometric forms that was built and features in the promo.

We also liked the negative difference between black and white, specifically the contrast of black and white universes to travel through, so we created an idea of a modern day Alice in Wonderland. However instead of using stale, 70s style, psychedelic design references we wanted it to recreate this idea in a more clean and modern world never seen before. We also totally relate to the tron-chic reference! You could say Tron in fashion.

How much collaboration was there with La Roux?
La Roux, or Elly, was really involved from the start. She had a very specific idea of what she didn't want, namely an 80s throwback style video, similar to what we've seen her in before. It needed to be unique and altogether modern, so as we are heavily involved in 3D motion graphics we thought it would be cool to propose something in that nature, especially as it hasn't really been seen before in a performance music video. Other than that she was very open to what we wanted to do for the design and ultimate look of the film, as long as it fitted with her style. Although we wrote the brief for the styling and make-up, Elly was naturally really specific about what she wanted for this too. She worked closely with her stylist Nova Dando and consulted us about what would work in the film so everyone was happy.

What was the most challenging element of the job?
The shoot and the time to prep for it. We wanted to achieve something that hadn't been done before, ie travelling shots integrated with heavy motion graphics in realistic but constructed environments. Initially the storyboard had a lot in it that we later had to simplify so we could shoot in a day and on budget. There were also a lot of travelling shots that we ended up creating using a specially designed green travelator.

The set design was the most challenging. We worked with Alun Davies in the UK who worked just under a week to get the black corridor, the chair and white set built, including all the props and plexiglass flooring. Then to shoot everything in a reduced timeframe was definitely the most stressful but the most fun. After, the 3D was of course laborious but we were able to take our time with it to some extent, compared to the shoot. It's never easy to do post on nearly 150 plans, but fortunately we have a lot of facilities at the studio that we work out of, namely Flame and a great team of animators.

The 3D environment looks really complicated with lots of details - how did you keep the promo as visually interesting as possible and, personally, what are your favourite parts of the video?

Eventhough it has the same design style throughout the three of us worked on different parts. As the film is split between four different universes we were able to work on each one separately, so that it gives a slightly different quality in each part. Of course the editing was important to get the rhythm and for it to work well with the music. There are lots of things that we love in the film, specifically the shots of her on the chair at the end and at the beginning. The travelator added a lot of energy to the performance so we were definitely glad to have that on the day.