Street Smarts & High Art Collide in Last Night in Paris' 'Pure'
Street smarts and high art collide with the undercover London R&B collective Last Night In Paris, as they release the eagerly awaited ‘Pure’, a trippy and disquietingly beautiful short film directed by Karim Huu Do. Launched online exclusively with Dazed Digital, 'Pure' has already picked up best Urban Music Video at last month’s UK Music Video Awards. Rushes was delighted having worked with Karim to realise his bold vision.
Rushes were involved from the pre-viz stage, which allowed the post-production house to discuss key sequences and ideas with Karim before the shoot itself. Starting work at this early stage gave Rushes time to research the technical requirements and looks necessary to accomplish Karim’s concept for the promo and led to the final shots being even closer to Karim's vision.
The Rushes CG team were set to the task of designing a ‘bug’, which features in the video as the source of an apparently hallucinogenic secretion that is consumed by various members of LNIP. After initial direction from Karim about what he wanted to see, the modellers developed his ideas to come up with an eight limbed creature with a hard shell and an orifice used to expel these secretions. Once the design was complete and modelled Rushes got to work on the animation, before passing it on for lighting and rendering. The Rushes CG team developed a complete sequence of entirely CG shots of the critter in its burrow, along with other smaller CG elements in the video.
Sky replacements, rig removal and clean up were carried out in 2D, with the VFX team also needed to create and apply an eye effect to act as a visual cue to being under the influence of the bug's secretions.
This effect was required on a large number of shots with the potential to be quite large in frame, it also required a transition state showing the secretions effects coming on and wearing off. In the end Rushes settled on a look akin to diesel fuel on a wet surface. This was animated to give some movement like a film sat over the eye and applied with a certain amount of translucence, to see some of the original eye beneath allowing the viewers to see some of the 'life' in the eye.
“The guys from LNIP and I wanted to create something different, a sort of surreal narrative anchored in the real world,” explains Huu Do.
Everyone was very pleased with the end look of the film and very proud of a startling and original new video for Last night In Paris.
LNIP have quickly become the most exciting outlet for urban music in the UK. They have an ever expanding European and US fan base with high profile names such as Pharrell Williams and Kanye West amongst their supporters. We’re sure both LNIP and Karim are heading towards great things in the near future.
