Rabbit Williams
Prime Focus has completed the post work on a promo inspired by Alice in Wonderland for Robbie Williams’ latest single, You Know Me
Directed by Diamond Dogs for HSI London, the promo, which also references the Royal Ballet’s interpretation of the Beatrix Potter stories, includes several VFX-heavy shots which were worked on by the team at Prime Focus in London.
“This was one of the most fun jobs I’ve been involved with,” said Flame op James Adamson, who also attended the shoot. “The singing frogs on the lily pad shot was great to work on. I literally used every bit of Flame – warping tools, plug-ins, we put reflections in, there was the comping element, colour correction, making their eyes blink and I also had to sync their mouths up with the song. It was a slightly comedic shot but it works really well.”
“There were some highly technical shots for example when Robbie effortlessly jumps up onto the banqueting table,” adds Adamson. “For this, he was being held by two guys and lifted onto the table. They shot me a clean plate with no one in it and then we had the guys in blue suits lift Robbie onto the table. I had to strip the blue guys out, re-time Robbie, put the new table in so there was no disturbance when he landed, and add a fake shadow then put a camera move on it.”
Prime Focus colourist Tom Russell graded the video. “It’s always great to be involved in a Robbie Williams project and this one more so than most because of the ideas behind it,” he said. “My job in the grade was principally to blend the various elements of live action, fantasy and animation into a unified whole. In order to achieve this I preformed the initial grade at the film transfer stage using a Pogle Platinum colour corrector and a Spirit Datacine, and transferred to HD 444. Once the edit was approved and the job onlined I imported the project as a dpx sequence into one of our Baselight suites. The extra power of the Baselight allowed me to key and track the rabbits fur and separate it from Robbie’s face, allowing for a smoother more unified ‘fluffy bunny’ look to be achieved.”
Metadata Title: Robbie Williams ‘You Know Me’ Record company: EMI Commissioner: Carrie Sutton Production company: HSI London Director: Diamond Dogs Producer: Lucy Booth Post production: Prime Focus Telecine: Tom Russell, James Tillett Flame: James Adamson, Adam Crocker, Anne Trotman, Rob Ellis VFX post producer: Chris Chard
