Parlophone Records: Gorillaz - Saturnz Barz (Spirit House)

Credits & Description:

Title: Gorillaz - Saturnz Barz (Spirit House)
Agency: Passion Pictures, Eleven Management, Parlophone Records
Brand: Gorillaz
Country: USA
Entrant Company: Youtube, San Bruno
Advertising Agency: Passion Pictures, London / Eleven Management, London / Parlophone Records, London
Production Company: Passion Pictures, London / Google Spotlight Stories, Mountain View
Director: Jamie Hewlett (Gorillaz)
Producer: Cara Speller (Passion Pictures Animation)
Executive Producer: Karen Dufilho (Google)
Artist And Content Services, Manager: David Mogendorff (Youtube)
Technical Project Lead: Rachid El Guerrab (Google)
Producer: Ellen Collins (Passion Pictures Animation)
2d Animation Director: Robert Valley (Passion Pictures Animation)
Creative Director: Jan Pinkava (Google Spotlight Stories)
Artist Manager: Niamh Byrne (Eleven Management)
Artist Manager: Regine Moylett (Eleven Management)
Music Artist: Damon Albarn (Gorillaz)
Sound Supervision: Scot Stafford (Google Spotlight Stories)
Director, Music Content: Vivien Lewit (Youtube)
Head Of Music Content Partnerships (Emea): Azi Eftekhari (Youtube)
Strategic Partner Manager: Eduard Castello (Youtube)
Product Marketing Manager: Ander Echezarreta (Youtube)
Brand Marketing - Youtube: Jake Oleary (Youtube)
Brand Marketing Manager: Eric Leiberman (Youtube)
Marketing Director: Jason Lamont (Parlophone Records)
Head Of Digital: Michael Hanson (Parlophone Records)
Production Assistant: Delphi Lythgoe (Passion Pictures Animation)
Artist Marketing: Grace Lee (Youtube)
Campaign Description:
As always, the band didn’t want to use technology simply because they could. Instead, they were determined to find new ways for the characters that make up the band to deeply engage with their fans through VR. After all these years, Jamie Hewlett was missing the pencil-drawn look of Murdoc, Noodle, Russel and 2D. This traditional hand-drawn aesthetic was important, and a considerable challenge, requiring a world first to execute perfectly in VR. The idea was to bring the audience on an immersive journey with the band, set against a soundtrack of four tracks from the new album. The pieces uses ambisonic sound design that places you within the scene.
Outcome:
The six-minute 360 video received more than three million views in its first 24 hours (on its way to nearly 8 million to date, alongside 28 million views of the linear edit), setting a new record as the biggest debut for a music VR video in YouTube’s history. The band were successfully reconnected with their long-suffering fans - proving to the world that their star power and creative excellence was undiminished, and generating huge excitement about the forthcoming album release.
Strategy:
During their pre-campaign phase, the band began exploring new ways to tell the characters’ story. After attending a VR symposium, they got excited about the format, so much so that they started working out the story before the songs were even recorded. Gorillaz's long time production partners had an active working relationship with their tech partners, who have been inventing conceptual strategy and technologies with a bespoke real-time game engine to produce and create films without frames for mobile. Leveraging that tech, Jamie Hewlett and his team of artists (including renowned 2D animators from around the world) began their work. The strategy was to surprise and delight Gorillaz fans by releasing this video on the same day as four tracks from the new album: Saturnz Barz (featured in the video in full), Ascension, Andromeda and We Got The Power.
Synopsis:
Gorillaz - officially the world's most successful virtual band - released 'Humanz', their fourth studio album, and first in six years, on 28th April 2017. As the focus media of the global campaign launch, 'Saturnz Barz (Spirit House)' was conceived to reintroduce fans to the band, premiere their new music, and capitalise on their globally active fanbase. Like all great projects, Saturnz Barz started with the creative - the label, management, tech and creative teams then rallied behind a unified vision. Ambitious from start to end, the team collaborated to bring Jamie Hewlett's singular vision alive in a way that audiences haven't seen or experienced before. The objective was to deliver, in a relatively short time-frame, a video that broke new creative and technical ground in interactive / 360 music video,
Relevancy:
Gorillaz 'Saturnz Barz (Spirit House)' has set a new bar for entertainment in interactive, 360 degree storytelling within the context of a music video. The release was recognized as the largest debut of a music VR interactive 360-degree video in history, receiving more than three million YouTube views in its first 24 hours.
Execution:
After only 90 days of all hands on deck production, working around the clock and around the world, writing unique code in response to boundary pushing creative, hand drawing the four band members and placing them seamlessly into a stereoscopic CG world full of monsters from Jamie's imagination, the video was premiered globally on YouTube as a 360 and as a linear edit on March 23rd. The video tells the story of the band visiting a “spirit” house, each member experiencing their own psychedelic journey through the haunted environment (and beyond!), coming back together bleary-eyed as the dawn breaks.