Framestore colorist, Simon Bourne, has just crafted the grade of a new Jay Z and Kanye West promo that’s set to take the world by storm. Directed by SomeSuch&Co’s Romain Gavras (best known for M.I.A.'s controversial Born Free video), No Church in the Wild taps into the current global spirit of protest by graphically highlighting police brutality during a street demo.
Romain and Jay Z both attended the grade and briefed Simon to create a documentary style grade that showed day as day and night as night. So he let colors and contrast fall into their natural places. This proved to be a huge challenge due to the extreme variation of light and dark in the promo, which comprised over 200 shots filmed on mixed formats: 35mm film for laser sequences, Alexa for the main body of the promo and Red Epic for high-speed shots.
“The extreme pale palette worked well with the film’s occasional strong colours,” explains Simon. “Romain is an extremely talented and thoughtful director who can translate his imagery on screen to look like moving art. To date, this has been one of the highlights of my career... made all the more satisfying by the fact that both Jay Z and Kanye West said they were more than happy with the finished promo.”
This project comes hot on the heels of Simon’s recent award wins and adds to an impressive body of work, including the much-talked-about Jake Gylenhall Shoes promo, for some of the industry’s most acclaimed directors: Daniel Wolfe, Ivan Zacharias, thirtytwo and Vaughan Arnell.