UK Screen Association - Representing the UK's Post Production and Special Effects industries

Prime Focus help bring Robbie Williams' fairy-tale to life for 'You Know Me'

Prime Focus have completed the post work on pop superstar Robbie Williams' new Alice in Wonderland inspired promo for his latest single, 'You Know Me' which was directed by Diamond Dogs for HSI London.

The promo shows Robbie falling asleep in his dressing room. He then dreams he climbs through his mirror into a fairy-tale land where he's a white rabbit. The video, 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."

James adds: "There were some highly technical shots for example when Robbie effortlessly jumps up onto the banqueting table. 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 suites 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. 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!"

'You Know Me' comes from Robbie's new album, 'Reality Killed The Video Star' which was released on 9 November by EMI.

Credits

Project: 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

 

 


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Published on 10/11/2009
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