Face to Face with… Najma Bhatti

"If you were lucky enough to attend the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors' Showcase at Cannes you would have had the privilege of seeing the Paul Arden hologram created to celebrate the Showcase's 20th anniversary. This week shots.net catches up with the woman responsible for creating the illusion, Square Zero director Najma Bhatti.

The hologram you created for the Saatchi's directors showcase at Cannes was used to brilliant effect… can you tell us the steps involved in working with Paul Arden's family and the technical challenges involved in creating a hologram?

Saatchi & Saatchi approached Paul's wife Toni with the idea and actually throughout the project the family didn't have much involvement.

We did ask his son to come in for a voice casting session for the piece, - as well as Steven Berkoff! but ended up using impressionist Peter Temple who just nailed it when he was rehearsing in the voice studio.

It was only after we had finished the job really that Toni, Paul's wife asked to see the piece. We conducted a viewing with Paul's wife, son, grandchildren and two of his best mates, which was very nerve-wracking. On the one hand we wanted it to be accurate, but on the other were worried about provoking a very emotional response. The round of applause we received after the first viewing and the positivity from his family made the project feel worthwhile and confirmed we had done a good job.

In terms of the technical challenges, I guess every holographic project we have worked on has had its own hurdles. For example: shooting a black swimsuit on Michael Phelps when black becomes transparent on the system.

This particular project posed a number of challenges. First of all there was the limited amount of footage. The final piece that you see was actually created using footage that had been looped and bounced several times over as there just wasn't enough high res material out there. And the next big challenge was finding a convincing enough voice over artist, without which the whole piece would have been shelved.


Your work seems to combine live-action and animation… do you have a preference?

Yes I guess it's become a bit of a trademark now. I trained as a graphic designer, specialising in moving image and my career to date has given me a thorough grounding of post production.

In the last few years I've started doing more live action projects and I have discovered a real passion for it. So it has been quite a natural progression for me to combine the two and certainly for the time being I'm happy taking the best out of both of those worlds.

What elements of each discipline do you enjoy the most?

In the animation world I love that literally nothing is impossible, you are only limited by time and of course money. In terms of creativity the possibilities are endless.

With live action, it is the immediacy. I challenged myself to shoot a music video and not 'fix it in post' and loved the purity of the result, knowing what we ended up with was exactly what was captured in camera, without any tricks or enhancements.

Can you tell us a bit about where the idea for the holograms came from and how it all came to life… it feels all very sci fi?

Well we've been creating holograms at Square zero for the past four years, when we first created the hologram for the launch of the Toyota Auris… Funnily enough using peppers ghost technique which has actually been around for hundreds of years - so going back into the past more than into the future.

For the Arden piece, Saatchi wanted to honour Paul for the 20th showcase as he presented the first. They had heard about the Frank Sinatra hologram we created for Simon Cowell's 50th and that set the creative wheels in motion.

The piece was created through a combination of footage, a specially shot body double and recorded voice double, motion capture and CGI. So I guess yes in that respect it sounds pretty sci fi. The fact many people can't break it into all the component parts means we've done a good job of blending it all together.

What are your main inspirations and influences?

I'm inspired by the very ordinary. You can put the everyday under a microscope - or in front of the camera and there's always a beauty to be found in looking at the details and nuances.

In terms of people whose work I admire and influence me, I'm a huge fan of Tim Burton. Other directors whose work I admire are Sam Mendes and Mira Nair.

Have you been working on any artistic projects outside of directing?

I have a couple of music videos which are more like personal projects that I've been working on in downtime. It's nice to just be creative and not have deadlines!

And I've taken up drawing once again. Going right back to basics. It is so much more therapeutic putting pen to paper than sitting in front of my mac.


Have you been reading, watching anything lately that our readers might be interested in?

Well I just read Paul Arden's It's not how good you are, it's how good you want to be which is inspiring for anyone creative. And I've been reading The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier which I'd thoroughly recommend to anyone interested in brand building.

If you had unlimited funds and resources, what film project would you plan?

It would be the story of the people who came to the UK who were classed as 'immigrants' who sacrificed and struggled to realise their dream - to give their children the lives they could never have themselves. It's an important story to me as it's part of my history but one that would strike a chord with so many.

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