Title | THROUGH THE DARK |
Brand | |
Product / Service | GOOGLE PLAY MUSIC |
Category | E04. Technological Achievement in Digital Craft |
Entrant | R/GA SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA |
Idea Creation | R/GA SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA |
Media Placement | ESSENCE DIGITAL Singapore, SINGAPORE |
PR | POEM GROUP Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
Production | R/GA SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA |
Production 2 | EXIT FILMS Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
Production 3 | XYZ STUDIOS Melbourne, AUSTRALIA |
Name | Company | Position |
---|---|---|
Hamish Stewart | R/GA Sydney | EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR |
Michael Armstrong | R/GA Sydney | CREATIVE DIRECTOR |
Blake Kus | R/GA Sydney | ASSOCIATE TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR |
Jess Bateman | R/GA Sydney | DESIGNER |
Shruti Rai | R/GA Sydney | SENIOR EXPERIENCE DESIGNER |
Aaron George | R/GA Sydney | SOFTWARE ENGINEER |
Kate Allan | R/GA Sydney | COPYWRITER |
Justine Cusack | R/GA Sydney | SOCIAL STRATEGIST |
Cory Nicely | R/GA Sydney | MARKETING SCIENCES MANAGER |
Julia Rush | R/GA Sydney | PRODUCER |
Natalie Brend | R/GA Sydney | SENIOR ACCOUNT DIRECTOR |
Jeff Donios | R/GA Sydney | SENIOR TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR |
Gertjan Leppers | R/GA Sydney | EXECUTIVE PRODUCTION DIRECTOR |
Mike Daly | Exit Films | DIRECTOR |
Kim Wildenburg | Exit Films | EXECUTIVE PRODUCER |
Marco Palmieri | XYZ Studios | LEAD ANIMATOR |
Richard Osellame | XYZ Studios | SENIOR TD |
Stevie Watkins | XYZ Studios | CG LEAD |
Garett Mayow | XYZ Studios | EXECUTIVE PRODUCER |
Eran Hilleli | XYZ Studios | LEAD DESIGNER |
Gina Moore | XYZ Studios | CG ARTIST |
Tim Murphy | XYZ Studios | CG ARTIST |
Heath Pagram | XYZ Studios | ANIMATOR |
Eran Hilleli | XYZ Studios | ANIMATION DIRECTOR |
Google Play Music needed to stand out in Australia’s crowded streaming landscape where there’s little differentiating platforms in the eyes of users. To set them apart, increase brand awareness and position the platform as an innovator, our idea was to create exclusive content that fans would love: an immersive music video with unprecedented interactivity. We collaborated with local hip-hop legends Hilltop Hoods. Their track, Through The Dark, is a deeply personal song written by band member Dan Smith (MC Pressure) about his son Liam’s battle with leukemia. Raw and real, the song connected deeply with audiences. Our idea was to bring that to life, translating conflicting emotions into something conveying the sense of a father’s world turned upside down. Users move through simultaneous 3D worlds, The Dark and The Light, by rotating their mobile device and navigating a journey through fear towards hope.
We meticulously mapped two complete worlds that exist in parallel, The Dark and The Light, to represent the ups and downs of fighting cancer. The result: a seamlessly flowing interactive film where users navigate their own path from fear through to hope, simply by rotating their mobile device. Driven entirely by code, the film is rendered in real-time in the mobile browser. To allow users to move between the two worlds, the cameras were mapped to the mobile device’s accelerometer. In build, we used the latest web standards, and created bespoke dev tools to allow fly-throughs in WebGL. Designed in Maya, each scene consisted of the geometry of the environment, shaders, lighting, cameras, camera paths and characters. To translate all of this from Maya into the mobile browser, any characters with skeletal systems were exported individually as Three.js JSON Objects, with the rest exported as a COLLADA scene.