Described as a “gory Celebrity Deathmatch meets Tarantino sequence,” Chris Ullens‘ music video for Lex Amanri’s The Kill 2 is what Ullens calls “A dream brief for me.”
“Sully, the creative director who works at the music label for the artist we made the video for, contacted me with the track and a story he’d written for it,” Ullens told us. “A couple of girls that go raging mad from a scrolling overload and went on a killing rampage. I guess he might’ve seen some of my previous gory videos…”
Ullens was immediately in. “From there, I went to work translating this story into a film by making a very rough animatic. I shared this with Max Alan, the producer at Marvelous Last Night and he went all steam ahead with his team making the sets and all the props.
“Jamie Durand, the DOP and my very good friend whom I’ve done countless jobs with for the past 20 years, is also great at soldering so he started making all the practical lights we needed. Everything supervised by the expert eye of Sully.
“One and a half weeks later we were in the studio for a 2 week stretch. It was during the UK heatwave, we had tungsten warm lights, it’s a windowless studio, no AC… it was very cozy. I had a few Mission Impossible sweat-drop catching moments whilst animating!
“After these 2 hot weeks of inventing fun gory ways to kill dolls, it was all in the bag,” he said of an on-screen killing spree that is surprisingly visceral, given that it’s enacted entirely by Barbie-like dolls.
“As the animatic was done before, I only needed a one day edit at the end. We had one day at the wonderful String and Tins sound studio with Adam Hare. The next day we had another day with the brilliant Jack McGinity for the grade at Studio RM and that’s it, the film was all done.
It was released the next day, only 3 working days after we finished shooting!”
Working on a tight budget and a deadline of only a month for two-and-a-half minutes of stop motion felt crazy to the team, but for Ullens it was also inspiring: “Stop motion’s great when you got tough limits, makes you more creative.
“Also, we made sure that we didn’t use a single walking shot or complicated movements as we didn’t have the time for intricate rigging nor did we have the time to remove any of the rigging in post, so we shot it all with only out of frame rigging. That’s why lots of it is shot on the bed or with the dolls sitting and so on.
“And that’s why we managed to do all the postings 3 days!”
Credits
Director: Chris Ullens @chris.ullens
Creative Director: Sully & Lex Amarni
Written by: Sully @_sullman
Production Company: Marvellous Last Night @marvellouslastnight
Executive Producer: Max Alan @maxalan._
Line Producer: Diaz Clarke @diazaliyahh
Stop Motion Animator: Chris Ullens @chris.ullens
DOP + Light Tech: Jamie Durand @durandlondon
Art Director: Maureen Kargbo @maureenkargbo
Costume Designer: @p.whitehornart
Miniature and Prop Maker: Kiara Gourlay @kiaragourlay
Grade: Studio RM @studio__rm
Colourist: Jack McGinity @dayofthejack
Grade Exec Producer: Mike Coley @mikecoley_culkin
Colour Producer: Maddie Godsill @madeleineruthg
Projector Capture: Chris Ullens @chris.ullens
Projector Capture: Jamie Durand @durandlondon
Projector Capture: Bowen Moreno @bowen_m
Projectionist: Simon King @skprojections
Sound House: String and Tins @stringandtins
Sound Design and Mix: Adam Hare @adamhare_
Audio Producer: Hetti Cook @hetti.mov