Bomper Studio directs animated music video for Foo Fighters’ ‘No Son of Mine’
Skwigly
Bomper Studio, a Welsh CGI and animation studio, has directed an adrenaline-filled, animated music video for legendary rock band Foo Fighters’ No Son of Mine.
No Son of Mine finds the band returning to their big-energy arena rock stylings with fiery riffs reminiscent of Heart, Motorhead and Queen’s Stone Cold Crazy.
Lyrically it’s meant to poke at the hypocrisy of self righteous leaders, people that are guilty of committing the crimes they’re supposedly against…
-Dave Grohl, Foo Fighters
RCA approached Bomper Studio with live action footage of the band, filmed by director Danny Clinch for Jimmy Kimmel Live!, with the desire to use this footage as a base to release an epic music video in a tight-turnaround. The initial brief was cut the live action footage with frames of CGI animation to tell a sketch-book style character story, reminiscent of the fast-paced, first-person perspective in Smack My B*tch Up by Prodigy.
The production took place from December 2020 – January 2021. Being huge fans of the hard-boiled storytelling and gritty aesthetics from comic book noir, such as the work of the iconic Frank Miller, Bomper worked to execute the music video in similar fashion.
Director Emlyn Davies and co-director Josh Hicks worked to develop a visceral tale that was hard and fast, charting the spectrum of lusts: blood, money, drugs and alcohol. Taking cues from the song’s lyrics and theme, the music video follows a character through a night of wild debauchery and violence – from strip clubs to bar fights to high speed driving – before a full punchline reveal of the character’s true identity. This story was then broken up into a series of vignettes, to be intertwined with live action footage of the band.
Foo Fighters: No Son of Mine (Bomper Studio)
For the characters, Bomper approached texture artist, Thomas Shaban, to create inky and contoured, hand-painted textures with a limited palette. Against the environments, the linework jumps the tracks into raw expressionism; drawing you into the world of the hard-hitting characters. Keeping in with the style, the film was built to lower frame rate of 12FP.
To keep the film feeling as a cohesive whole, Bomper edited the live action footage and treated it; doing R&D to hand-paint frames from each shot and then running it through an EBSynth to match the grungy, stark, duotone output of the CG shots.
The film uses stark black and white visuals, punctuated with green and is filled with quick cuts, chaotic action and disorientating close-ups to deliver knockout punches. Nothing is overly smooth or slick, but the high contrast, explosive film works to serve up a shot of pure adrenaline straight to the heart.
The music video is available online across Foo Fighters’ YouTube and social media platforms.