Tim Burton has directed the new promo for Las Vegas’ finest, The Killers. Their new track ‘Bones,’ is from their second album ‘Sam’s Town’ on Island Records. Production has been managed by LA based Refused TV with 3D computer animated skeletons and post production carried out by MPC.

Tim Burton has directed the new promo for Las Vegas’ finest, The Killers. Their new track ‘Bones,’ is from their second album ‘Sam’s Town’ on Island Records. Production has been managed by LA based Refused TV with 3D computer animated skeletons and post production carried out by MPC.

The promo was shot in LA over 3 days, with MPC’s Chas Jarrett in attendance. One day was spent shooting romantic scenes with the hero couple at Point Dume, Malibu. The subsequent two days comprised a green screen shoot at LA’s South Bay Studios capturing the Killers own performance. DoP Max Goldman shot the ad using a Panavision Genesis camera, directly to HD Cam SR with a 4:4:4 capture mode, to enable a cleaner keying process and more grading latitude.

Miniatures were shot of the motel and drive-in movie environments; these were then composited together with the backgrounds and the green screen band performance in Flame. A digital matte painting was created of a sunset desert horizon was also integrated into the sequence.

During the course of the promo, we see different people turn into skeletons at different times. The actual 3D animated skeletons were modelled in Maya and rendered in Mental Ray. In some cases, the hero couple peel off their skin and items of clothing before revealing their skeletal personas, to ensure that the transitions between real and 3D characters appear as lifelike as possible, these particular shots underwent compositing clean-up. The 3D model skeletons were then roto-animated over the actors and band members, where they adopt of the exact performance of the real protagonists. For the re-enactment shots, there were a number of complicated integrations between the waves and our hero skeleton couple. Towards the end of the film, the skeletons shatter and fall to the floor, to achieve this, MPC used their in-house PAPI system, created specifically to convincingly shatter, bend and melt all types of material for ‘Poseidon’.

The promo will air from 31st October 2006. ‘Sam’s Town’ was released October 2nd, 2006.