It’s a wet and miserable night in London and I’m waiting in the rain outside Convent Garden tube station for a friend so as I can take her out to The Hospital!
Now you would be forgiven for thinking that a night out with me sounds about as much fun as a night in with endless back to back episodes of Casualty, but fear not as I was taking her to the Premier screening of the new Gorillaz Track “Dirty Harry” which was being held at the swanky “Hospital” bar in Endell Street.
So eventually I met up with my friend and after a few slight wrong turns we found the bar and entered, not knowing what to expect. We were told to wait in the lobby until it was ready for us to go upstairs to the screening. So we wait. Damon Albarn walks past and goes up. We wait some more. A huge entourage of media “luvvies” and “darlings” kiss air and go up. We wait some more. More media types walk in and get shown upstairs and I’m tempted to explain that I work for Glasswerk and therefore demand some special treatment like the rest! However, being the mild mannered guy that I am I sit tight and let the anticipation build inside me, until finally we are led to a lift and taken up to a small room which acts as a holding area for us where we have to do a lot more waiting whilst everything is set up for the screening…however it was full with free booze so don’t feel too bad for us!
Finally after being plied with far too much alcohol we are led into the small cinema where we are about to have the privilege of watching the new Gorillaz video, “Dirty Harry”. We are shown the first ruff story boards by Jamie Hewlett (Co-Creator of Gorillaz) in order to get a grasp of the production process for this video. The team were looking to merge two worlds again, (like they did with “Dare” and the inclusion of Shaun Riders head), by having the Gorillaz seen in the real world, in this case in the desert with guest Booty Brown. So we are then shown the first run of animation they did with all the live desert footage combined with the ruff cartoons of the Gorillaz and it was fantastically breathtaking stuff, and it still wasn’t finished!
One of the most interesting things that the animation team have done with the Gorillaz is to age them since the first album. The Gorillaz are not only a musically ground breaking band but the team of animators that they have are also trying to constantly push themselves and so each character has been aged a few years and this will carry on going as if they are a real living band. As well as this the animators have combined the drawings and the actual live film footage with computer technology as well and so small details such as a starting pistol at the start look unbelievably realistic and add a depth and integrity to the whole video.
Eventually the actual video is shown for the first time in its entirety and it again is absolutely superb. It has the humour, the breath taking vision and of course the fantastic sound track that is becoming the expected Gorillaz standard. Much like the music the video just cannot be faulted with its strict attention to the smallest detail, and when we learned it takes around 24 drawings to get a second worth of film, you know this was hard work!
And so there it was. We all left the building, slightly drunk and all extremely impressed with what we had just seen and we went off on our separate ways to spread the word about the Gospel according to the Gorillaz, because they’ve only gone and done it again.
