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The visual tone for this campy, sexually-charged music video was set by George Michael and director Joseph Kahn, and implemented by independent visual effects supervisor Eric Durst ("The One," "End of Days"). Kahn, a longtime George Michael fan, was surprised to get a call from the singer-songwriter last December and to find himself sitting in his London flat listening to "Freeek" the next day. "This was the first time I met an artist without first hearing the song," said Kahn. "George played 'Freeek' and asked how I envisioned it. I said a super-hero treatment could provide the textual and visual foundation for the song's charged sexuality. George was fascinated. We kicked around some ideas and I headed back to California to prepare for an early January shoot," said Kahn. Kahn quickly called Durst, whom he had met several years earlier but had not had occasion to work with. "Things moved forward at light speed. Joseph showed me a treatment on Friday. I immediately called ComputerCafe, whose work with me on the motorcycle scene in the feature film "The One" was really impressive, and booked their new partnership The Syndicate to handle the visuals. On Monday I saw the final treatment and on Tuesday the three-day shoot at Universal began," said Durst. "The video required a tremendous amount of highly detailed work, from animating individual products to 'Tron'-izing Michael's energy suit to creating the flying cars and people. It was very impressive to see one or two artists take on key scenes that required different skill sets, track, animate and light elements, and integrate them into the larger piece. It's a tribute to The Syndicate's style that individual artists complete key scenes, rather than taking an assembly line approach," added Durst. During the shoot, The Syndicate received dailies -- 35,000 feet of film in all -- and ran it into flame* to set the tone, and to break out the shots and determine the best method for handling each one. "George Michael, Joseph Kahn and Eric Durst were very open to our ideas and experiments," said The Syndicate creative director Ron Honn. "The process was highly collaborative. George and Joseph kept telling us to have fun and be creative while we produced some 180 effects shots in a little over four weeks." While nearly every shot in "Freeek" is visually enhanced, three pivotal scenes comprised the core of The Syndicate's work: the opening dark city fly-through, the central dance sequence, and Michael's climactic love battle with the sexual super-vixen. "The cityscape matte, executed by Deak Ferrand ("Lord of the Rings," "The One," "X-Men"), is an ominously detailed, sci-fi matte painting that reveals its charged identity as the camera approaches through glimpses of building signage playing composited videos and cutaways of street action. "We employed a 2D/3D process, creating 3D geometry to map the 2D painting elements to obtain the correct parallax perspective as the camera moves through the environment from Michael's point of view," said Honn. "We then mapped bits from the product advertising parodies onto the skyscraper video screens to introduce the song's theme of rampant sexual commercialism. Finally, we joined Michael's tracking 3D camera moves and added additional 3D flying vehicles to complete the effect of a busy nighttime downtown scene in what appears to be a seedy bit of old '70s Times Square transported to the future." In the featured dance sequence, Michael controls four leashed Dobermans who morph into dominatrix-outfitted dancers for an exuberant number that was filmed on greenscreen and composited in flame* onto a surreal floating set. "To enhance the suspended space vacuum effect, we created a futuristic 3D dance floor environment around which rotate huge beveled metallic rings that complete the surreal atmosphere." "We tried different looks for the vacuum environment, experimenting in 3D and placing the black-clad dancers against a white background, which played nicely and gave the sequence an unusual look," said Honn, crediting his design team for exploiting the reverse black-on-white look, which was "one of those happy discoveries we made along the way." |
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The finale, Freeek's main street sexual showdown with a super cyber-vixen, is one of Honn's favorite moments. Michael, dressed in a glowing red superhero energy-suit, saunters down the avenue to face off with a cyber-vixen who seemingly arises from a nether dimension wearing a matching red-hot red sexual energy suit. With a wave she sends a tsunami of sexual energy down the street, literally tearing products out of store windows and blowing everything at Michael, who casually tugs at his elbow, halting the flying products in mid-air, as the charged couple embraces, two creatures with the same thought. "This sequence was fun," noted Honn. "We displaced the environment and added particle debris to the blown-away products, which were rendered and animated individually, giving them individual and group motion as they respond to the vixen's energy blast." The video comes full circle, ending as it began with an animated CGI fetus moving in time to the breathing of George Michael's character. As the image fades down, the robotic arms, from the opening "cryo-chamber" scene, eerily return to begin attending to the fetus. "From the rough sketches Joseph provided, The Syndicate connected all the dots and delivered great images," said Durst. "They really grasped the essence of the director's vibe and put a shape around it. We had a great combination of people and personalities who were open to ideas, and we came up with some great stuff." "I just love The Syndicate's philosophy and style and knew they could handle this complex project. They've always been committed to elevating the visual effects capabilities of the desktop. With their enormously talented staff, they can handle any challenge seamlessly," said Durst. "We had great communication from the big opening scene of the matte painted cityscape through the climactic face-off with the cyber-vixen." The Internet played a key role that kept the far-flung partners in the creative loop. The Syndicate, working in Santa Monica and Santa Maria, created five FTP sites to provide high- and low-res dallies to Kahn in Hollywood and on an assignment in Florida, to Durst's California home, and to Michael's staff in London. "The FTP kept everyone involved throughout the project," said Durst. "In visual effects, it is crucial that you carry everyone along the production path, getting creative input from everyone, which often uncovers new approaches and results in a better product." CREDITS Freeek! versions: (*) can be found in both Maxi-CD (1 and 2) |