DOM&NIC's Latest Chemical Brothers Video Pushes Virtual Production Boundaries

‘Live Again’ is a perfect Chemical Brothers track - unstoppable, resolutely hopeful and, once heard, utterly unshakable - it needed a suitably compelling video. So Tom & Ed turned once again to directors DOM&NIC, the creative duo who have worked with the band over a period of twenty five years on videos including ‘Hey Boy Hey Girl’, ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’, ‘Setting Sun’, the multi-award winning video ‘Wide Open’ and most recently ‘Free Yourself’.

This time DOM&NIC entered the technological filmmaking frontier of virtual production and real-time VFX to create a trippy ‘Groundhog-Day-esque’ adventure story through multiple environments in a continuous dance performance by the captivating and seemingly elastic human, Josipa Kukor. 

To achieve their vision DOM&NIC and production company, Outsider brought together not only a world class crew, most of whom had never shot on a virtual stage before including cinematographer Stephen Keith-Roach and production designer Chris Oddy, but also the creative and technical expertise of Untold Studios, together with virtual production specialists from ARRI Solutions, Creative Technology and Lux Machina, all hosted on and powered by ARRI Stage London, the state of the art virtual production studio in West London.

The journey of making it pushed the technology beyond its known limits, breaking new ground, and adding weight to the proposition of embracing virtual production as a creative choice first and foremost, rather than as predominantly a time, money or travel saving method of filmmaking.

On making ‘Live Again’ DOM&NIC said, “Working with the Chemical Brothers is always a dream for us. To have such a strong and inspiring piece of music and blank page to create a visual companion to it is as close to blissful creative freedom as it gets for directors. This was our tenth collaboration with the Chems and we knew time would be tight on the back end of the project. The combination of this and the track’s title inspired the idea of a dance piece with a character caught in a continual loop of death and rebirth.

"The idea that we could do this in long unbroken shots inspired us to use ARRI Stage London in a way that had never previously been done. We wanted to create real-time rendered environments that could change without cutting the camera. Much of the hard VFX work would take place prior to the shoot, running concurrently with the rest of pre production and ultimately save time in post. But on top of this it inspired an idea that could not really have been achieved in any other way irrespective of time and that was exciting for everyone.  We were showered with the generosity of such a strong and huge team of immensely talented companies and individuals that helped us to make this film happen. Many of whom we work with regularly on commercials and a number who have also worked with us on past Chemical Brother’s videos. Without their time, talents and generosity a film like this could never make it out of heads and onto a screen.“

Untold Studios real-time supervisor Simon Legrand added, "This project was a perfect storm, with our team at Untold working with Outsider and the ARRI Stage London team to pull out all of the stops to bring DOM&NIC's bold and innovative concept to life. We pushed the boundaries of what’s possible in Virtual Production, breaking ground as we went. After designing seven bespoke virtual worlds in pre-production, we were then able to tweak elements on set, on the fly, giving the directors the freedom to play and experiment.  This is the first time that virtual environments have been switched live on set in this way and we're really proud to have been trusted to help make it a reality."

“Working with the production on this project represented many creative and technical challenges. It was a unique opportunity for all of us involved to really see how hard we could push the boundaries. Technically, this required a huge collaborative effort between camera, lighting, VFX and virtual production supervision to ensure seamless integration. This promo brought the best of the best together across all these disciplines to bring the creative team’s vision to life and deliver an incredibly special end result,” said David Levy, business development director, ARRI Solutions.

Supporting this, Will Case, director of innovation, Creative Technology Ltd. said, “It was incredibly exciting to have such an innovative and technically challenging project come into the stage. It really pushed the boundaries of working in real-time workflows and technologies to bring to life DOM&NIC’s visually stunning promo. It required everyone involved to work collaboratively to achieve this very challenging but hugely rewarding project together.” 

‘Live Again’ features vocals from Halo Maud (Heavenly Recordings) and follows on the heels of the recently released single No Reason and is taken from the tenth Chemical Brothers album that’s due later this year.