[PrOJECT SUMMARY]
MUSIC + GAMING = BE
[BACKGROUND]
Apl.de.Ap, founding member of Grammy winning hip-hop group The Black Eyed Peas, approached Pulse Creative to create a music video for his song "Be" featuring rapper Honey Cocaine and singer Jessica Reynoso. With a short turnaround time to produce the video, we pitched a video game-inspired plot that revolved around the idea of being whoever you wanted to be in a digital world.
[My Involvement]
Before production, I helped develop the video's story, and scouted locations to shoot. On the days of the shoot, I took photos and shot behind the scene footage. Within a 1-2 month post-production period, I helped manage a team with the cut of the final product, as well as designing the fictitious mobile game UI from the ground up. I was also tasked with creating promotional content like social media.
[MUSIC VIDEO]
GOTTA JUST BE
The music video premiered in January 2015 on Apl.de.Ap's YouTube channel, currently with over 235,000 unique views.
[ACCOLADES]
BE AWARD WINNING
[Branding]
CREATING THE GAME
[The Game's UI]
Though not a real video game, the music video presented scenes where it was purely the user interface (UI) and featured the heads-up display (HUD) during live action shots. All of this was created from scratch, and had to be thought through like an actual game. Scenes had to make logical sense on where they were leading in the next few clicks. In addition, the placement of typical gaming UI items like stats, text boxes, avatars, etc, had to make sense for a mobile gamer's experience.
[The Game's Logo]
When creating the logo, since the word "Be" is two letters, it was stylized more as a symbol than a actual wordmark, lending itself to be used throughout the video not just as a logo, but also as an icon within the designed UI.
[PROMOTION]
SEEKING PLAYERS
[ALBUM COVER]
Though not released on streaming service platforms (as of yet), the single was released on Apl.de.Ap's Soundcloud, and required an album cover design which mimicked the gaming's UI, as well as featuring all the artists who appeared on the song.
[Social Media]
With the lead-up to the launch date, behind-the-scenes photos from the music video shoot were shared through social media, as well as branded content to build hype for the video. After the release of the music video, exclusive behind-the-scene videos were shared.