Making Everglow with Nico Cotta

Today saw the release of Coldplay's new video, Everglow. To find out more about the promo and the VFX process behind it, shots caught up with Nico Cotta creative director and founder of the VFX company behind the work, CherryCherryVFX (CCVFX).

Tell us what inspired the video.

The song Everglow was inspired by the meaning of the word, ‘the feeling of peace and love given by something or someone’, a song filled with personal emotion and life experience needed a video that would reflect the story and do it justice.

This video was inspired by a story of love and sadness and worked towards captivating those watching it fulfil the purpose of the song.

How long did the post process take? 

The post process started on set with our supervisor working closely with Joe Connor who directed the promo and went for over two months back in our studio.

What was the biggest challenge in realising the promo and how did you overcome this?

It was very important that our ice skater looked and moved as natural as possible to keep the emotion and the elegance in her movements. For this reason, we decided to film her dancing for real with an ice skating partner.

The biggest challenge then was having to erase him from the film, we had over 40 heavy FX shots where sometimes which involved rebuilding bodies as during the interaction he was passing in front of her.

We overcame this problem with patience and methodology, we worked in three steps, one team were in charge of the clean-up, whilst another team used DMP and 3D projection to rebuild the ice ring and sometimes her body before going to final comping.

How close was the collaboration between the different teams (VFX and production)?

The collaboration between the production and CCVFX was very close, before the shoot we had several meetings to establish where the cameras would be placed to give us freedom to cut at the right time and angle avoiding very complex shots.

In the post process the director was also really involved making sure that again, we had the less problematic shots as possible.

Was there added pressure working for such a big artist?

There is always more politics when you are working with super star and yes in that case pressure was definitely on!