Insidious
A collaborative effort showcasing integrated capabilities. Movie
We helped create amazing content and re-purposed it across multiple mediums.
When creative director Michael Campbell approached thelab about producing visuals for the James Wan directed film Insidious, he was already aware of our creative process. Because of the success of our previously completed work on posters and banner ads for the film Soul Surfer, he was prompted to reach out to us again, to work on both the movie images as well as the website for the film.
Campbell was facing many challenges on the Insidious project. His company, New Think Ink, pitched ten different ideas to Sony/Film District and once a final image was decided upon, the production had to move quickly and effectively.
thelab had no production stills to work from, so shot the entire project from scratch. Instead of flying actor, Ty Simpkins, to New York, as originally planned, we suggested going to him in LA and while there we also shot the iconic house from the film. We shot the house in the morning, and Simpkins in the afternoon, then composited the two shots together and began our retouching process. In the end, the overall image had a mysterious and ominous feel to it, completely representative of the feeling of the film itself.
Besides the production challenges, our time line was also extremely condensed. When Film District bought the film it was originally set for a summer release, but that was pushed up to spring giving us less than a month to make it all happen. “These were high pressure deliverables,” said Campbell about the process. “With movies there’s no such thing as pushing back a launch date so we had no chance at failure.”
Another challenge Campbell had with the campaign was related to the film website. Time was of the essence here as well and he only had a two week time frame to churn out a complete site for the film, incorporating motion graphics and flash design. So based on the outstanding work we did on the poster creation, he asked thelab to help make the website vision a reality.
“We needed to do the website and it needed to be first rate and sexy,” said Campbell, “There’s such a a high expectation for Hollywood movie sites. We knew it had to be strong and thelab turned it around in record time.”
The interactive art directors at thelab got to work right away, and were able to create a site that would normally take a month to do, in only two weeks. By using After Effects to create motion graphics within Flash thelab’s artists recreated elements of the film’s look and feel with the animations. A strong integration of video and sound design combined with a restrained and delicate use of flash, effectively conveyed an eerie flickering quality, reminiscent of the film.
“The movie title and the entire positioning of the film was very unique. thelab was able to translate that with as much energy and excitement as the trailer, which is very rare.” adds Campbell.“Sometimes the graphic treatment is hard to translate, but it had the same dynamic feel as everything else in the campaign and the film itself.”
In the end the motion typography, the shifts of color and space and the sound effects came together in a dynamic website that was true to the film on every level. thelab was also responsible for creating all of the online advertising which also incorporated Flash integration and a multitude of rich media sizes for re-purposing the content as banners on multiple sites.
“There’s such a high level of communication at thelab between the producer and what was happening creatively that you were never worried about what they were doing,” said Campbell. “It was extremely inclusive in terms of the process.”
Overall the project was a large scale success. When the finished poster went to market, and the film grossed 50% more than the average for the genre, we were asked to create another poster for the European market. Additionally the website was creating industry buzz and had a largely positive effect on the marketing for the film.
“Not only was I pleased but the client was blown away and then other people in the industry really took note of the Insidious website,” adds Campbell, “There was a lot of industry buzz about how well done it was. Every element of the work was so well thought out, you would have thought we had three months to develop it instead of three weeks.”
Click here to visit insidious-movie.com. Below are the original raw images and final comp for the poster work.
thelab produced an in studio photo shoot with actor, Ty Simpkins
we also shot the background image of the house from the original movie including the gloomy sky.
an image from the original movie was captured to create the international version background.
