3D Concept for Radiohead In Rainbows Album Movie

 

Working with director Matthew Taylor on a ‘Akira’ style art piece for the new Radiohead Album: In Rainbows. The album is the soundtrack and of course it’s a silent film. The trick is to make believable, yet powerful 3D and surreal imagery for an actress and imposed characters to live in. The first scene is a beautiful girl (who is really similar to a robotic being) who is being controlled by an alien force who is looking down to her from a ‘control room’. Here are some concepts we designed. I’ll put up more shots when i get back into the studio.

Radiohead In Rainbows music video concepts

IN RAINBOWS
15 Step
INT. BLUMES SHOP
An old control panel flickers to life showing vital signs as a psudo-organic amorphous figure.  The lights flicker on and off as morecontrol panels come to life.  Camera moves the control panel to reveal a large window overlooking a room full of mounds of discarded mechanical body parts.  In the middle of this large room with debris, lights come on to reveal a center room.  The visor on this room folds back to reveal a mechanical woman.  She is facing down and black wires run out of her arms and legs.  The cables run into the surrounding walls.  Inside the mechanical cocoon there is an infinite white space that contrast with the dirty old decay on the exterior of the birthing
chamber.  As if conserved by the chamber for decades there is a life that is thrust into the mechanical woman.  As the lights flicker in the control room, the mechanical woman comes to life, with jerky motions.  She raises her head up to examine her surroundings and then from the control room is prompted to stand.  The control room reveals a series of video monitors that reveal different facets of this mechanical person.  She takes steps forward testing her range of the her wires that bind her to the room.  The lights and controls become more fierce in the room as her motions mimic the kinetic connection.  As the reflection between the control room and the mechanical woman becomes more violent, her wires snag on her stiletto boot and causes her to malfunction.  Suddenly the control panel blinks a command to her and she resist against it.  As she becomes self aware she begins to struggle against the control room.  Her violent reaction to the control room causes the controls to burn out.  The monitors go dead and black smoke starts to poor out of the panel as she begins to tear at the wires, riding them from her body.  As she tears them out she violently convulses and staggers out of the same cocoon toward the edge of the room and free for the first time, topples over the edge.

This is an early concept of the control chair

Obviously it went through some variations.

We thought it would be cool to have it in ruins.

Close up of the red version.