Gap - soundondofcolor.com - Red

Q&A with Blip Boutique (Mary Fagot & James Frost)


What was your inspiration behind Red? How did you come up with the creative?

We knew the color we'd be working on first, so the initial inspiration was first the graphic nature of the color red, which we felt would be communicated well with the use of projections. When we heard the song, it really came together for us in that it was about the back and forth between a guy and a girl, a sort of play of real vs. imagined as well as a personal tit for tat. This worked very well for the play between the projected and the real that we worked with in the final piece.


Tell me about how Red was shot/created (you mentioned projections)

We actually used two different methods to shoot the piece technically speaking. When we shot all the plates that would later be projected either on talent, or against buildings etc, we shot using HD P2 cameras in full 1080i so we could get the best possible quality for the projections. We shot every element separately. For example the lips, a lovely girl called Gina had her face painted green to allow us to key the lips and isolate them. We then made three different sizes to allow them to be re-projected on to our talents faces on the day. We did this for every element you see.
We also had an optical soundtrack printed of the song so we could actually see the sound of color. It was more fun and exciting to do it this way and felt more organic. Everything was done in camera; there was no post involved, apart from the keying of the elements for projection.


How did you get involved with the project?

Blip Boutique was contacted directly by Rehab who saw our work online.


How much freedom did you have in the concept and style of the individual video?

We had total freedom with the concept and style of the video. We were only asked for a treatment, and The Gap/Rehab had only positive feedback to our ideas. There sole concern was that we'd presented ideas that we so ambitious given time and budget constraints.


Did it feel more like shooting music video or a piece of branded content?

Blip Boutique works primarily in viral video and branded content for music and advertising. As the Sound of Color project was specifically intended as an online campaign with a viral focus, we definitely saw this more in terms of branded content than traditional music video. Therefore we focused on creating a piece that spoke to the music, the color and the context equally, meaning that we did something that would connect in the online space. We find that unlike contemporary music video which tends to have an extremely narrow definition of what is possible, that digital content has become an extremely open creative space where the possibilities are endless. In practical terms we did not treat it as a music video, since we we’re given the color first, as opposed to a “song”, this made us concentrate on how best to represent the color to music as opposed to how best to sell a brand to a song.