Unwritten law
‘the hum’ album campaign
Overview
It had been 11 years since SoCal punk rock legends Unwritten Law released a new record. So when we were brought on to develop the video visuals, we knew that we had to do something special. We originally wanted to make an hour-long album film and we received a greenlight to do so. However, a week before pre-production, funding for the project fell through. That didn’t stop our ambition. We found clever work-arounds and production techniques to maximize our time and budget.
The result was an entire album campaign starting with an album teaser, then some social promos, music videos with trailers of their own and a 2-part music video film.
‘The hum’ Trailer
The trailer was a whirlwind. We got the request from the label with the notice that the trailer was due within 72 hours. We could’ve just created an animation or something simple, but that’s just not our style. So two of us went out to Bombay Beach and filmed a fully-improvised concept in one day/night with singer, Scott Russo and his girlfriend, Rochelle Tobey. We met the deadline with 30 minutes to spare. ;)
Ghosted
An hour after the “Album Trailer” was released, we received a call about the first music video. After the entire album film fell through, we backed out of doing the music videos, but the band and label were so impressed by the trailer that we were asked to come back and produce them. As with the trailer, the timeline was tight — just 4 days. So, we immediately got back in the car and went back out to the desert to film for a night. There was no concept, just the band’s desire to have a character in a sheet ghost costume. 15 minutes before arriving to set, Director, Joseph Russo had an epiphany and the storyline came to fruition. The result is “Ghosted”, filmed on location in Bombay Beach, CA with a crew of 5 (including talent).
The drops
To coincide with the drop of the album, we produced these “drop” videos for social media. Inspired by ‘The Hum’ album artwork and the beam we used in the “Ghosted” video, the beams dropped on notable locations as the album released in those locations in realtime.
tokyo
Los Angeles
shanghai
san diego
sydney
GIza
london
beggars
A month after “Ghosted”, we were brought on to produce a lyric music video for the next single, “Beggars”. Again, we could’ve done something simple, with words against a background, but we’re Make A Thing, so we’re going to make a thing of it. Shot on location in San Diego while we were helping to produce an activation for FX Networks for Comic-Con, we used projection to display the words. We also decided to develop a little storyline that would be “in-world” with the rest of ‘The Hum’ album.
The lunas
The crescendo to our campaign was a 2-part music video comprised of the next two singles, “Magnetic” and “The Hum”. To lead up to this video, we produced these teasers. The first is meant to introduce “The Hum” — a fictional VR world. It also introduces the device that is used to access The Hum and ties in the musical interludes on the record. The scripts are made up of a mixture of lyrics from various songs and they provide a background to the world that we’ll explore in “Magnetic” and “The Hum”.
Magnetic & the hum
What started as an hour long script for the entire album was condensed to a 9-minute, 2-song music video film for “Magnetic” and “The Hum”. MTV’s ‘Teen Wolf’ actor, Tyler Posey and international model, Tehya Elam signed on as our leads. The crew was small, but mighty and we filmed for 4 days, including a day at a theater in Tijuana, Mexico.
All of the videos to this point, led to this and we were proud to produce even a portion of the film that could’ve been.