British rapper Little Simz's new music video Young was directed by filmmaker Dave Meyers and delivers a bold, offbeat vision of freedom, youth and self-expression. The video called on the VFX team at London’s Daydreamer (www.daydreamer.xyz), who worked across the project from shoot to delivery.
Young shows the artist as an elder version of herself, transformed through prosthetics and a shiny gold grill. She begins the video in a cap and bonnet, sharing her plans to live it up this summer, and follows up that proclamation with a trip to the pub before hitting the stage in a plaid outfit and platform boots - all symbols of youth and rebellion.
The Daydreamer team included creative director Pete Rypstra, VFX supervisor Tom Clapp, 2D lead Polly Gwinnett, technical operator Jake Day, executive producer Chris Allen and producer Eliza Light. The creatives were challenged by Meyers with a last-minute request - to change the color of Simz’s robe and bonnet, which were originally black. The VFX team also had to handled background wall replacements for several crowd scenes.
The Daydreamer team employed Slapshot (slapshot.ai), an AI-powered toolkit, to help complete the job. Slapshot’s AI-powered roto technology was able to quickly isolate Simz’s robe and bonnet, producing high-quality mattes that could then be changed to deep purple color that appears in the final video. The roto tool was used across 18 shots for wardrobe purposes, as well as several crowd scenes.
“It was my first time using Slapshot,” reveals Day, “and once I learned to start from the most representative frame, the tool was incredibly accurate. Compared to other AI roto solutions we’ve tried, Slapshot was faster and gave much better tracking.”