Flight Facilities - With You Music Video [2012]
Best Music Video, In The Mix Industry Awards 2012.
Client: Flight Facilities
Director: Benjamin Drake
Guest Animators: Alexis Dean-Jones, Xin Li.
Compositing: Sen Wong, Steve Smith.
Off the back of the Gotye stage visuals the previous year, fellow QCA grad Steve Smith put me in touch with the manager of massive Sydney electronic duo Flight Facilities, who needed a music video for their new track ‘With You’ featuring UK artist Grovesnor. I took it upon myself to concept, board and animate the three minute track in the same frame-by-frame style as ‘Easy Way Out’, and subsequently bit off way more than I could chew. Luckily, local talents Alexis Dean-Jones, Xin Li, Sen Wong and Steve were able to jump on board. Alexis and Xin helped animate a couple key shots, and Sen and Steve bailed me out at the last minute on the compositing side of things.
Concept
Right from the get-go I wanted to produce something that was a love letter to Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy, and began drawing up childlike robots and cute versions of the two members of Flight Facilities, Hugo and Jimmy.
Final Design
The main character became a cyborg named Phoenix Flight, who’s helmet featured a faceplate that became the Flight Facilities logo when activated. The overabundance of blue in the colour scheme made the whole thing an accidental reference to Leiji Matsumoto’s Interstella 5555 music videos for Daft Punk’s Discovery album.
Narrative
The lyrics of With You described an illicit love affair, secrecy and infidelity, so the look and feel of the piece took on a more mature and edgier atmosphere. I started drafting a story based on false memories of Astro Boy’s origin story, from the series in the 1980s. I always thought Astro Boy was a cyborg containing the surviving heart of Dr. Tenma’s son, Tobio, who was killed in a car accident. Turns out Astro Boy was a robot, pure and simple, only made in Tobio’s likeness.
The idea of a man resurrected, like RoboCop, into a cyborg body was then laid against the song lyrics, suggesting a story in which a woman is having a love affair with a cyborg, perhaps against social taboo. We would see images of trouble at home. The twist then became that this cyborg is, in fact, her husband back from the dead, pursued by the shadowy Dr. Grovesnor who is responsible for his resurrection.
Storyboards
Originally an extra layer of intrigue was planned where the wife would meet with what appeared to be an ordinary looking man at the bar, who would later be revealed to be the cyborg Phoenix Flight in disguise. The robot butler spying on them was later replaced by captain’s hat wearing Jimmy of the Flight Facilities.
Conclusion
There is a lot I would do differently if I was tackling a project like this today on a similar budget. That said, although my feelings at the time were soured a bit by burnout, it was generally well received!
Despite the limitations of the visuals the layers of the love story managed to communicate and it seemed to resonate with FF fans and viewers online. It was hugely gratifying to see people in the comments piecing together the story with their own interpretation. There were definitely vocal critics too, who thought the “studio” had put out low quality and derivative work. No argument from me, but being mistaken for an entire team of people was a kind of inadvertent compliment, I guess!