Ride the light in this extraordinary skating adventure through the streets of Downtown LA.
Brief
Vimeo and Saatchi & Saatchi’s ‘Hello Future, A Music Video Challenge’ seemed like the perfect opportunity for Watergun to flex its muscles. The competition’s brief was to produce a music video for a track off Moby’s new album, ‘Destroyed’.
The theme was ‘Hello, Future’.
‘Hello, Moby’. We replied.
Idea and Process
Take a few Marty McFly skateboards. Throw them against the backdrop of Blade Runner’s dystopian vision for the future. Sprinkle them with LED lights and a sci-fi dodecahedron. Cook until crisp, and you have one mean concept to gobble up.
We decided that we wanted to take Pukas’ concept of LED surfboards – which were designed for night surfing – and apply it to skateboards. After all, apart from grannies, who doesn’t love a skateboard?
After a period of extensive research, we discovered a company in San Diego that created exactly what we needed: Photon Lightboards. They jumped at the chance of coming on board (pun intended). So Watergun headed to Downtown-Echo Park in LA, where we sourced the perfect skaters for our video.
The idea for the hologram flyer came from L_A_N Magazine’s Simon Whybray – with whom we had collaborated a few weeks earlier – making this launch video for him using motion tracking and his custom-designed typeface.
Beyond the video
Our video reached more than 100k views on Vimeo and is the second most viewed of the contest, after the winner.
Team
Directed by Ricardo Uhagon Vivas
Co-director: Stefan Pavlovic
Editor: Jorge Sandoval
VFX Supervisor: Gabe Ferrao
Cinematographer: Chris Saul
B Camera Operator: Aaron Shapiro
Additional photography: Ricardo Uhagon Vivas, Stefan Pavlovic and Erik Anderson
Assistant Director: Rafa Sanz
Sound Mix: Nacho Lopez
Make Up: Pauline Noriega
Prop Master: Eric Fisher
Flyer concept: Simon Whybray and Veronica So
Lightboards courtesy of Photon Lightboards
Skaters:
Shannon Joy Rodgers
Sebastian Arrieta
Josh Sierra
Espen Solberg
Thanks to everyone that helped out on those two nights in Downtown LA, and to all the extraordinary people we met on this nocturnal adventure.
