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M People: Fantasy Island

"There were two or three essential elements to the film's brief," explains director Matt Broadley. "Performance is M People's style, and Heather Small is the voice and face of the group, so I had to incorporate both ingredients and not depart too far away from what they do best. On the face of it this put quite restrictive constraints on a promo."

Broadley's solution was to place the group on a revolving stage inside circular walls, surrounded by a deep whirlpool filled with a rushing stream of barely visible people, so the band appear as a beacon of light in a mad, bad world. Rushes' Henry operator Victor Riva was responsible for the visual effects. "For the stream of people I motion blurred and doubled up the original 15 bodies and made them slightly see-through and softer,"he says. "The water texture was also added in Henry. It was colour corrected and added to the walls to give it a realistic edge. I also added a fire texture to the floor, which adds a nice feel. The water was also warped against the walls and now seems to melt into them seamlessly. Over all these layers I finally added a vignette and put in a directional blur to hold it all together."

PRODUCTION: Serious Pictures; director: Matt Broadley; producer: Donnie Masters; DP: Adrian Wild; art director: Simon Godfrey POST: Rushes; facility producer: Camilla Henfrey; telecine: Mark Baugh; off-line editor: Stewart Read at Big Tuna; Henry: Victor Riva

COMMISSIONER: Fraser Kent at BMG/Deconstruction