Boomtown has swiftly become one of the UK’s most notorious music festivals that brings a wealth of creativity and imagination to the table. So it’s always a pleasure to be called upon to contribute to this. It’s not the first time we’ve been asked to create promotional content for the festival, however the 2023 trailer represents a shift in gears in our creative process. As a team we’ve always been excited by new additions to the event such as new stages or extensions to the site and this has always been the driving force when conceptualising our films, but the approach was different for the latest trailer and the ideas were more related to the visual language of recent promotional content.

We were supplied with a small library of illustrations from the design team and some of their recently published promotional artwork. The brief was simple - create a 90 second trailer that explores and expands this new visual language. We invited Trago Studio, a rare hybrid of motion design and live action talent, to assist with the creation of some of the 3D assets and animation sequences. Additionally, as members of the festival’s onsite media crew, their familiarity with the event’s ethos and energy is unrivalled. The final results represent a milestone in a decade of content creation for the festival and a portrayal of true collaborative creative freedom.

When we first saw the designs by Holy Moly the ideas rapidly started to multiply. We started to deconstruct the illustrations and recreate individual elements as 3D assets, a process which fueled the idea generation and storyboarding of the film. Boomtown boasts a diverse array of music and performance and is always driven by a core concept oriented around awareness and care for ourselves and our surroundings. The 2023 title, The Twin Trail, is directly linked to a programme that aims to help participants enhance their connection with both their inner selves as well as the surrounding natural world. and a means of balancing these two mindsets. The journey of the two interwoven ribbons that lead us through the trailer representing the process of balancing these two fundamental mindsets.

The ribbons were just one of many 3D assets we created to build our scenes. We started deconstructing the illustration into individual components to give ourselves a clearer vision of which elements would require conversion from 2D designs to 3D objects suitable for building CG environments. Once we had assembled an archive of useful materials and animated elements we were able to construct our scenes and put together a rough animatic using playblasts and tests, giving us accurate editorial information for the final edit timeline.