At the start of 2016, we got the chance to work on the video for Ria Mae's latest song, "Gold". This short film-like video takes you on a journey through a tumultuous relationship filled with secrets, betrayal and double-crosses.

The lyrics use the metaphor of drugs as a way to describe the intoxicating and addicting feeling of not being able to get over someone you love.  We wanted to manifest this visually by depicting gold hallucinations whenever Ria and her love interest (played by Gaby Henderson) are together during the flashback scenes.  The gold smoke that Ria and various characters exhale throughout the video represents both the literal drug in the video, but also the addictive and euphoric effects of love.

We began by storyboarding as much of the video as possible. This was particularly important for the more VFX-heavy scenes where we had to composite gold pieces or gold smoke into the live-action shots.

We then filmed all the footage on set as organically and cinematically as possible, knowing that although we would later be compositing CG gold elements into the scene, we didn’t want to obstruct the natural visual look of the video. To create the gold smoke effect we had Ria exhale from a regular vaporizer on set. We then keyed and manipulated the smoke to create a gold-like look. For the shots in the club we simply had talent pretend to exhale smoke, and then later shot separate smoke plate shots in our office that we composited together and color-manipulated in post.

The gold particles and shapes were modeled in 3D and then tracked & composited onto the live-action footage.

We went through a number of ideas & tests for what the gold in the video would actually look like (blobs? Spirals? Smoke? Glitter?) until finally settling on the shimmering pieces in the final video as well as the larger spiraling gold shape above the bed.

CREDITS

Written & Directed by Alon Isocianu
Produced by Jason Aita
Director of Photography: Kris Belchevski

Executive Producers: Geoff McLean & Stacy Vaughan
Production Company: VISION FILM CO.

Creative Studio: reactiv
Edit: Alon Isocianu & Jacob Doforno
VFX: Alon Isocianu, Jacob Doforno, & Scott Mulligan
Post Producer: Alex Nursall
Post EP: Anna Junger

Colour: Clinton Homuth @ alter ego