How Megaforce Delivered the Spirit of Burberry through Sci-Fi
‘Night Creatures’ comes as the third film for luxury brand Burberry, in a sequence of eye-catching pieces that have stuck with all of us. Not only did the campaigns become viral online (we all remember the ‘Open Spaces’ memes), but they also utilised freedom of creativity, music and choreography perfectly, to create films that capture the essence and life within the Burberry brand.
Marking Burberry’s 2022 Autumn outerwear collection is the third metaphor-heavy piece that speaks on the elements of freedom, exploration and adventure. Utilising classical sci-fi elements and what MEGAFORCE would call some sci-fi ‘cliches’ to set the scene, the film plunges the audience into the beauty of nighttime London, sprinkled with some impeccable CGI.
Once our three main characters exit the first scenes of the film – in which their bus crashes in the middle of the road – they timidly come out onto the street to be greeted by a giant alien-looking creature of the night. MEGAFORCE told LBB that designer Stéphane Levallois’ inspiration for the creature came from a mixture of pop culture references, one of which was the shape of enoki mushrooms.
LBB’s Zoe Antonov spoke to MEGAFORCE to find out about their creative connection with Burberry, what the parallels in the three films are, and more.
LBB> What was the brief for this campaign and what were your initial ideas surrounding it?
MEGAFORCE> The brief for this campaign was pretty open. The idea was to make something cinematic, more so than the two former commercials we’ve done, and to talk about ‘adventure’ and ‘exploration’. So we first explored different ideas where the protagonists could travel through the city at night.
LBB> This is your third collaboration together. Tell me more about the relationship between yourselves and Burberry. How involved were Burberry creatively in the making of the campaign?
MEGAFORCE> It’s a quite rare relation of trust. Burberry patiently waited for us to come back with an idea after we received their brief. It took us a few weeks of exploration and we were really about to give up when we finally came out with this proposal. Luckily for us, they liked it with absolutely no comments and we could start developing the story more precisely. The main discussions we had together were about the look and animation of the creature and the music, but apart from that we’ve been incredibly free to follow our inspiration and it’s a really fortunate position to be in.
LBB> Tell me the way this piece connects with the previous two - 'Festive' and 'Open Spaces' and the themes that intertwine between the three.
MEGAFORCE> The three films connect on the fact they are conveying metaphors. The first film was about facing, in a positive way, the adversity materialised by those gigantic blocks of hail falling from the sky. In the second, the urge for freedom materialised by becoming free of gravity, and in this new film, we talk about facing the unknown (the future, the fear of the other for instance) in a positive and playful attitude. We also kept the way of introducing the films with some acting, and let the film finish by being, in or on water, creating a structural continuity between the three films.
LBB> What was the look that you were going for with this film? What informed your aesthetic choices.
MEGAFORCE> This year we wanted to explore a night scene. The late bus coming home was a nice introduction to our characters and the reveal of the creature was going to be more mysterious this way. But it was also a post production choice as it’s easier this way to integrate a CGI element into some live action. And finally, it was a good solution to differentiate this piece from the two first films.
LBB> How were the giant trees or tentacles made and where did the idea for them come from?
MEGAFORCE> We worked with an amazing character designer, Stéphane Levallois who would just sit there with a pencil in his hand and was able to draw as you spoke through the references you’d pulled together. It’d suddenly take shape, and then the monster was there in front of us. For the design itself, we took our inspirations from different movies and things, from the monster from Bong Joon Ho’s ‘The Host’ to ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’, passing by the Japanese enoki mushrooms.
LBB> What was the role of the music in the making of the film? How did you choose the right track and why did you set on this one?
MEGAFORCE> In a choreographic video, the music is central. The actors act with their body, supported by the sound. We were first exploring more intense and powerful tracks until we tried some more quiet tracks and discovered that the contrast between them and powerful imagery was more unexpected. It leftmore space for the sound design too. We finally found ‘Celebration’ by Yom which was bringing a unique emotion and levelling up the whole choreography in an emotional and poetic way.
LBB> Sci-fi is an interesting approach for the fashion world - do you think that is being picked up more recently or is rather new and untapped? How do you think it resonates with the brand?
MEGAFORCE> It’s not totally new to quote sci-fi in fashion, it was done in the past. Actually, the purpose of fashion is to define future trends so it makes total sense. For us, what is more important here is the mix of influences we had. We obviously pick a sci-fi ‘cliché’ situation at the beginning to mislead the spectator but quickly it turns into something else that is more magical, more poetic. The sci-fi world for us is more of a way to tell something else.
LBB> How long did the campaign take from beginning to end?
MEGAFORCE> Initial script conversations started way back in April 2022, leading into a huge design process, detailed casting search, and then finding iconic London locations (that we could completely control across five night shoots], meaning we very much needed this considerable lead time. The shoot took place at the end of July and then the mammoth post task began. All in all, a six month odyssey.
LBB> Any final thoughts?
MEGAFORCE> Working on this kind of film with this kind of freedom in creativity is precious. This collaboration is brilliant for us, as it’s about selling outfits and clothes. The product is there from the beginning to the end, but we’re delivering the spirit and the signature through the narrative.
