RO.ME: A Chrome Experiment (2011)

Posted on July 6, 2011 by contact

RO.ME ~ A Chrome Experiment
 

www.ro.me launched yesterday, May 12, 2011, the latest interactive music video from director Chris Milk and Google’s Aaron Koblin. “3 Dreams of Black” is an experimental music video for Danger Mouse and composer Daniele Luppi‘s Spaghetti Western-inspired concept album ROME, featuring the track “Black”.
The album features Jack White and Norah Jones and will be released on EMI. This experience was built specifically for Google Chrome Canary using HTML5 based WebGL. Mirada was tapped as the conceptual design and animation partner, creating digital assets for the interactive music video produced by Google Creative Lab & @radical.media with 2D animation by Anthony Francisco Schepperd, interactive production and conceptual design by North Kingdom and vfx by Oddball Animation (see full list of credits below).

“3 Dreams of Black”, featuring the track “Black”, is divided into three separate dream states, each with different levels of interactivity ranging from simple fullscreen viewing through to complete 360° movement through 3D environments, giving the viewer an open path to chose where they end up and how they get there. Ro.me pushes the boundaries of web technology and brings forth a vast field of oppotrunity within non-linear narrative.

A Milk + Koblin Project

Ro.me is Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin’s third collaboration. In 2010 the two created both The Wilderness Downtown, an interactive HTML5 short film set to Arcade Fire‘s song “We Used to Wait”, and The Johnny Cash Project, a crowd sourced music video where users submit illustrations of individual frames, creating a music video set to Johnny Cash singing “Ain’t No Grave”. Milk + Koblin is Chris and Aaron’s company focussing on special projects such as these Google Experiments.

MIRADA

Mirada is a studio designed for storytellers. Founded by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, and Motion Theory co-founders Javier Jimenez and director Mathew Cullen, Mirada is equal parts design studio, visual effects & animation facility, creative & technology incubator, development and production company. Mirada opened in 2011 with narrative tradition at its heart and technological innovation as its engine.

Said Ricardo Cabello, Lead Data Arts Developer, Google Creative Lab, “’3 Dreams of Black’ has made it clear that WebGL brings a lot of possibilities, but at the same time requires a level of technical knowledge that just a few studios have. Mirada has that and more. Not only did they easily adapt to the challenging requirements of the project, but they also suggested great solutions at critical times.”

“3 Dreams of Black” is part of an ambitious transmedia project being launched to support the ROME album. Utilizing the interactivity of WebGL, a new technology which brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the web browser, “3 Dreams of Black” reveals the lucid dreams of Temple, a girl born after the apocalypse.

“This project gave us a great opportunity to push the storytelling experience into new, non-linear directions,” said Javier Jimenez, co-founder, Mirada. “It was clear after meeting with Chris that ’3 Dreams of Black’ was going to break a lot of ground in how fans interact and engage with artists and music.”

The “3 Dreams of Black” story is told as a visual experience through three dream worlds. Rich 2D drawings and animations are interspersed with interactive 3D sequences in which viewers can take control with their computer’s mouse and guide their journey through the unfolding narrative. Viewers can continue exploring these 3D worlds, or even contribute to the dream by creating their own relics using a 3D model creator, with some of the best creations integrated into the experience to become a part of others’ dreams.

Mirada was brought into the project by Milk — who directed last year’s Arcade Fire “The Wilderness Downtown” music video with Google — to conceptualize, design, build and animate the visual language of the project. This included art directing the look of the worlds and creating the stylized assets for nearly 50 characters. These creatures include “Life Animals” — deer, rabbits, dogs, butterflies, etc., and “Black Animals” — bears, scorpions, tarantulas, buffalos, etc. Working closely with North Kingdom, which handled the web design and back-end programming, Mirada’s creatures are a constantly morphing herd guided by the viewer’s cursor. At different points in the song, the herd comes into contact with its environment, whether it be city, countryside or desert, and destroys it or populates it with plants, trees and other forms of life — interactions Mirada also designed and animated.

“Mirada breathed life and energy into these strange low polygonal creatures,” said Milk. “They really helped make what was a digital abstraction of an animal feel organic and alive.”

Mirada’s team handled extensive R&D, studying animal run cycles, herding behavior and patterns, and programming this information into the creatures. “Life Animals” exhibit an elegant, fluid movement, while “Black Animals” race across the screen aggressively, striking at the environment in hard, fast motions. Because the animals change seamlessly from one creature into another, Mirada also programmed morphing attributes into the herd.

Said Mirada Technical Lead Andy Cochrane, “We were challenged with having to squeeze Chris’ incredible vision into a realtime engine that can run smoothly on ‘my mother’s laptop’ and fit in a tiny download size. The constant focus was on simplicity with the appearance of complexity. It had to react to the viewer in real time, so characters were kept relatively small, run cycles were 30 frames or less, and behaviors were driven by extremely simple calculations. At the end of a project, it’s always easy to forget all the minute technical details that go into attaining the final result, but in this case the details are what make the project so special. It’s a sum of its parts…”

Mirada’s team of concept designers and artists, led by Art Director Ram Bhat, worked closely with Milk to design the look and movement of the creatures, creating extensive concept art, much of which can be viewed here: http://www.mirada.com/rome

Danger Mouse and Luppi joined forces in 2005 and have gone to Rome nearly every year since to record instrumentals from classically trained Italian musicians, some of whom played in the original soundtracks of Spaghetti Western classics directed by the legendary Ennio Morricone. With the soundtrack complete, Danger Mouse and Luppi enlisted White and Jones on vocals for the resulting album ROME, releasing on EMI on May 17th. For more information about the album: http://romealbum.com

Credits

Written and Directed by Chris Milk

ROME
Danger Mouse
Daniele Luppi
Norah Jones
Jack White
Featuring “Black” from the album ROME
By Danger Mouse & Daniel Luppi, with Norah Jones
Google
Creative Director – Aaron Koblin
Technical Director – Mr.doob
Lead Developer – Branislav Ulicny
Data Arts Team – Doug Fritz, George Michael Brower,
Jono Brandel, Aleksandar Rodi?, Valdean Klump
Executive Producer – Sandra Nam
Marketing Manager – Thomas Gayno
Produced by Radical Media
Executive Producer – Jennifer Heath
Executive Producer – Jon Kamen
Executive Producer – Frank Scherma
Head of Production – Derek Roberto
2D Animation by Anthony Francisco Schepperd
Additional Animation – Kelly P. Franklin
3D Animation and Conceptual Design by Mirada
Producer – Mathew Cullen, Javier Jimenez
Head of Visual Effects – John Fragomeni
General Manager – Patrick Nugent
Post Production Supervisor – James Taylor
Art Director – Ram Bhat
Technical Director – Andy Cochrane
CG Supervisor – Danny Zobrist
Coordinator – Andrew Merkin
Technical Consultant – Eskil Steenberg
Concept Designers – Tuna Bora, Aaron Clark, Justin Harder
3D Generalist – Brandon Lester
Modelers – Bryan Repka, Edwin Chiu, Margaret Dost
Riggers – Mike Gajga, Andrea Gausmann
Animators – Brandon Lester, Colin Cromwell, Eric Hedman, Owen Klatte, Connor LaBella, John Mangor-Baurley, Scott Paquin, Keyur Patel
Lead FX Animator – Kevin Gillen
FX Animators – Ryan Phalen, McKendree Poston, Charles Stornolio
Production Manager/HR Director – Tina Van Delden
Interactive Production and Conceptual Design by North Kingdom
Creative Director – Daniel Ilic
Producer – Marcus Ivarsson
Business Director – Roger Stighäll
Design Director – Robert Lindström
Art Director – Klaus Lyngeled
Concept Artist – Mathias Lindgren
3D artist – Martin Rasmussen
3D artist – Jonas Gramming
Art Director – Riccardo “Double C” Tagliabue
Designer – Henrik Karlsson
Technical Director – Mikael Emtinger
User Experience Designer – Alfredo Aponte
Developer – Klas Kroon
Developer – Bartek Drozdz
Developer – Lars Alin
Developer – Andreas Emtinger
Film Production by Radical Media
Executive Producer – Jennifer Heath
Line Producer – Ari Palitz
Production Supervisor – Melanie Melnyk
1st AD – Chef Roussel
DP – Matthias Koenigwieser
Production Designer – Chris DiLeo
Gaffer – Alex Gaynor
Key Grip – Julian Janigo
1st AC – Dave Whiteman
2nd AC – Eric Wolfinger
Bestboy Grip – Mike Prim
Wardrobe Stylist – Susan Doepner
Practical Special FX – West Efx
FX Supervisor – Erick Brennan
FX Supervisor – Joseph Kenkins
Effects – Michael Fortune
PA’s – Gerardo Reyes, Mackenna Dixon, Marcus Demmon
Storyboard Artist – Brad Arnold

Film Post Production
Editorial – Spotwelders
Editor – Livio Sanchez
Asst. Editor – Heather Bartholomae
Telecine – Company 3
Colorist – David Hussey
Online Services – Tunnel Post
Online Editor – Kyle Jackson
Visual Effects by Oddball Animation
Wes Ball, Brad Hawkins, Lucie Rouche
Cast
Girl – Emily Pelz
Legal
Joan Aceste / Radical Media
Yakshi Campf / Radical Media
Glen Westerback / Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC
Moderation by CrowdFlower
Lukas Biewald, Joseph Childress, Mark Erdmann
Monotone, Inc.
Ian Montone
Amy Schmalz

Music Courtesy of EMI
Featuring the song “Black”
Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi (feat. Norah Jones)
Written by Daniele Luppi / Brian Burton
Published by Cheese Breath Music administered by Chrysalis Music Ltd
(ASCAP)/Belmondo Music (BMI)

Special Thanks to our friends at EMI
Dominic Louth, Dan Duncombe, Michael Hanson, Alex Eden-Smith, Nickie Owen, Nicola Brown
Special Thanks
Andy Berndt
Robert Wong
Sundar Pichai
Min Li Chan
Lily Lin
Chris Kim
Emily Hawkins
Sunshine, Sachs & Associates
Cody Heller
Jessica Brillhart
Soledad Penadés
Marisa Fiechter
Varathit Uthaisri
Alexander Chen
Jenny Ramaswamy
Meredith Hoffer
Chris Wright
Fabian Teichmueller
Tom Pursey
Claudine Beaumont
Sara Jew Lim
Ed Sanders
Ben Malbon
John Flippen
Joanne Feola
Won Chun
Henry Bridge
Gregg Tavares
Warren Dern
Jason Lyon