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shots gets the filmic treatment


Pop promos can be an interesting proposition. Some have a coolness setting turned up to 11 and spend the duration of the song making the artist/band look like Arthur Fonzarelli's ice cubes. Some take the 3:30 run-time to tell a complex story through considered imagery and narrative action. And some, a golden few, are so wilfully insane and joyous that they manage to both out-cool the former and out-compel the latter by simple virtue of their joie de vivre! 'Break Free' is that kinda promo!

Taking its cues from kitch sci-fi like Barbarella, Flash Gordon and Star Trek, Chris Marrs Piliero's eye-popping vid for pop princess Ariana Grande states its irreverent intention from the opening crawl. What follows is a wonderfully realised homage to the campy goodness of space-bound fantasy, including zero-g acrobatics, alien slayings and… ahem… front-loaded missiles.

We were enraptured by the promos cheeky charm, so caught up with director Piliero, from LA production company DNA, to chat about the vid's tone, the space setting and how he got the label to agree to those rockets.


How did you get involved in the project?

At the start of 2013 I directed a video for 'Popular Song' by Mika & Ariana Grande. We clicked really well on that set and learned that we had a very similar sensibility, but timing didn't seem to work out for us to work together again until this past summer when she had her record label and management reach out to me to direct the video for 'Break Free'.

The vid states its intention from the first frame with a classic space-serial crawl and cheeseball VO. Was it difficult to get the tone agreed on by the label? How did you convince them?

There really wasn't much convincing needed at all. Ariana wanted to do a retro sci-fi music video inspired by films like Barbarella and so I wrote up a concept. She dug it. Label and management dug it. We were good to go. It was pretty much a wam-bam-thank-you-mam kind of situation without any hiccups really.



How much 'universe building' was involved in the prep? Did you have a back-story for Ariana's character? Why were those people locked up? Who fitted the bosom rockets?!

Ariana starts off as someone who had been converted to be a part of an evil army, but has now decided she won't take part in its evil ways any longer. She chooses to fight back and free those being held captive. The Tree of Life symbol holds a lot of importance to Ariana so we decided to have that be a major power source that our villain is using for evil. Ariana must retrieve it in order for her mothership to be able to power up and get back home. Along the way, she shoots rockets out of her bosom to destroy a giant robot.

Right, we've got to ask it – the bosom rockets, were they a dealbreaker? How early did they enter the pitch?

The bosom rockets were originally going to be bosom grenades. When we got to set, though, I didn't feel like her outfit lent itself to the grenade gag very well, so we switched them to the rockets. In their grenade form they were a part of the pitch from Day 1, so there was no challenge in changing them to rockets.



The costume and art depts must have had a ball putting together the look for the film. How much was in-camera and how much computered in later? How did you decide on the look?

Except for the robot all of those costumes and aliens were practical. As far as the planet goes, we created a nice-sized area with our dirt and rocks and brush in the foreground and then extended it all in the background. The cave is another example of the foreground elements all being practical and then we filled in the world on the sides and in the background. The white tunnel she performed in was also practical and we extended that in post, as well.

For her zero-gravity performance we actually shot it the same way they did for the original Barbarella film. We had her rolling around on a large plexi-glass that was raised up high and put the 'wall' of the room on the ground below her to make it seem like she was floating in the room. Ariana is a big fan of lavender/fuschia/magenta so we used that as our color pallete. My art director Phil Boutte and I sat down and sketched out various looks for all of the set ups based off reference images we assembled as well as ones that Ariana provided. We wanted to balance modern vfx with the retro scifi vibe.



We spotted Barbarella, Flash Gordon, 2001 and the cantina from Star Wars as influences. Did you crib up on ace sci-fi for research?

I definitely refreshed my memory, but I was already very familiar with the vibe and the reference films. I wouldn't turn down an excuse to watch those films again, though, for research purposes.

How was the shoot? Did you run in to any problems? We can imagine some potentially problematic zero-G striptease snags.

Ya know… we really didn't have any problems on set. Sorry to have a boring answer for this one, but the shoot went fairly smoothly.



The shoot must have been fairly fun. Was Ariana up for it all? Did you have to coerce space-heroics out of her?

It was a lot of fun and Ariana had a blast with it. I was actually stoked that in the post process one of the notes she gave me was to make sure we she shoots the alien point blank to add a nice VFX blast to his face. So yeah… she really got into it. Ariana has really great taste in movies, and we connected on that level, and it was great to share our references and up the level of work.

What was the post-process like? Did you get to play around with the robot/ship design much?

Yeah we spent a decent amount of time putting together references and mock-ups for the robot and the ship. I wanted them to look cool with a modern level of VFX but still possess a very retro vibe to their aesthetic and styling. It was important that the robot encompassed a current spin on an old-school looking robot design. Same goes for the ship which we gave those exaggerated fins to. In the end, the VFX team took the sketches and brought them to life with incredible results.



How was the edit? Do you have to get the balance right for popular artists like Ariana to make sure there's enough solo time alongside the space craziness?

I edit all of my videos so I have a pretty good flow when it comes to balancing the narrative with the performance shots. That's something I love about doing narratives for pop videos… I get to have cool action stuff as well as the beauty performance. Both of them are a lot of fun to shoot.

Are you pleased with the result? Are the label? It must be heartening to see blogs like io9, which would normally stay far away from pop promos, embracing the film.

Yeah totally. Ariana did a great job and looks gorgeous in it. I was really stoked to see io9's post. That was rad. Always cool to see a site you dig give your work some love.



What's up next for you?

My brother and I have a feature film script we are writing and we have a short film called The Liars Chair (that we wrote and I directed) coming out in October–ish through New Regency Pictures and Break Media. Also, Ariana and I are prepping the next music video right now. It's gonna tackle another genre. This one's gonna be a bit darker. I'm really excited about it.