Joshua Tree Channels Comic Book Style for New #HCL Tech Digital Film

Joshua Tree’s latest digital film for HCL has been created in motion comic style to further the software giant’s ‘Ideapreneurship’ campaign. A combination of comic book imagery and animation, the film is the visual extension of the ‘Chronicles of Idepreneurship’, a customized comic created by agency ITSA as part of the end-to-end campaign for the client.

Using the same characters and storyline as that in the comic, the digital film follows the journey of the central character Matt who, after spending a great deal of time working in environments where growth and ideas were suppressed, finds himself working at HCL and thriving in a culture of encouragement and free exchange of ideas.

“HCL as a client is extremely particular about their messaging and aesthetics. For us as the production team the work was cut out clearly. We had to make sure that the characters that were already well loved in the HCL diaspora via the comic were brought to life with equal panache in the film. HCL wanted the characters to be completely relatable, especially Matt, and this meant a lot of micro detailing and consistency on our end,” explains Priyanka Kher, the producer on the job.

The film, a Joshua Tree production was animated by Conduit Studios in South Africa while the music and sound design was completely taken care of in Mumbai. The two and a half month long project involved managing teams over two continents and three cities. Everything was done virtually with the client sitting in Gurgaon, the animation studio in Cape Town and the post house in Mumbai.

From the point of receiving the script, to creating the extremely detailed storyboard, followed by the character development of Matt and others, to finally the actual animation, each and every component went through four to five rounds of feedback and approval. The communication process at every step had to be critical and meticulous.

“The process of managing the project virtually was new and a big learning curve. Through the execution of every single point of feedback, we had to keep in mind that we were targeting a delivery date that had to be met at all cost. Unlike a regular shoot where the client and the agency are physically present to give feedback as things are happening, here, the process involved keeping four different teams in the loop and connected at all times and also making sure that the tiniest of requirement is met. This in itself was a huge challenge,” elaborates Joshua Upputuru, the executive producer at Joshua Tree.

The story is set in New York and it was very important that the voices used for every character were the right accent, tonality and expectedly different from each other. This meant several rounds of voice quality and accent tests along to have the right mix and variety. Music had to have an orchestra feel for scale and one of the best music directors in the county was used.

“HCL has a unique philosophy called Ideapreneurship. The employees at HCL are considered as everyday heroes.  And they do that by questioning everything. The film had to bring this philosophy alive in an interesting manner. That's why the treatment of the film is like how one would treat a superhero story - in a graphic novel approach. The film demonstrates this beautifully. Working with Joshua Tree was smooth and fun. The team was spread over Mumbai, Gurgaon and South Africa.” says Emmanuel Upputuru, Creative Chairman at ITSA , creative agency for HCL.