Simon Wallett and Andrew Whitney of Hotknife Digital Media wrote the brief for the video promo, inspired by the rhythm of the track. “It instantly conjured up images of clockwork objects and so we chose to create a world inhabited by wind-up toys,” said Simon Wallett. “It also had a darker undercurrent for which we created an old forgotten robot toy-maker who creates and plays with the clockwork world at night.”

The project was completed under the Warp Records / Four Minute Wonders website scheme. This scheme, which is run in several UK regions, provides advice, support and exposure for up and coming video directors through the running of monthly pitches for new music tracks. The Four Minute Wonders scheme is supported by organizations including Channel 4, the Glasgow Film Office, and the East Midlands Development Agency.

One key rule of the scheme for winning pitches is that the video must be produced within four weeks. The Hotknife / Boom Bip project was created entirely within 3dsmax and the animation was rendered with the PURE 3D rendering card from ART VPS. Hotknife Digital Media chose PURE to ensure a high production quality could be achieved in the very tight timescale.

“PURE gave us the quality of reflections and high quality of image essential to the production both for materials and lighting,” commented Andrew Whitney. “PURE’s rendering speed enabled us to complete the project within the short deadline while maintaining the high standard of visuals we expected.”

The Hotknife team made particular use of PURE’s unique hardware-accelerated physically based lighting and camera effects. “We used the skylight shader for the interior of the globe to produce clean subtle shadowing, whilst the superior bump mapped materials combined with spotlights helped emphasise the dirty, harsh exterior world,” added Whitney. “Without PURE we wouldn't have begun to consider depth of field or motion blur shots to the extent that we did, on such a tight deadline.”

Once edited, some scenes were then composited, coloured and grained within Discreet’s Combustion, including shots that needed to combine the CG animation with video footage of the toymakers face shot in the studio.

The whole project took Hotknife four weeks with a budget of £5000. "We burned the midnight oil,” added Wallett. “We had not only to write, storyboard, build, animate, render and edit the animation, but also squeeze in our other client work as well.”

The finished piece can be seen at www.hotknife/boom.

Meanwhile, Cincinnati native Boom Bip is touring in the UK for the first time with his band.