Francois Rousselet reunites with The Rolling Stones, for Angry - their first new music in 17 years - to bring the billboards of Sunset Boulevard brilliantly to life with decades of Stones' iconography.

Sidney Sweeney plays the 'rock chick' who is having the time of her life, cruising the strip in a vintage Mercedes SL, past those iconic billboards. 

But the main business of the video, the real star of the show, are the billboards themselves - beautifully designed, crafted and wonderfully executed with outstandingly creative VFX work by the team at Black Kite Studios in London. The most iconic moments of the career of the Stones - six decades of material - come to life in a video for what turns out to be a properly good new Stones track.

Although the eye-catching billboards have almost all disappeared today - they started as hand-painted boards in the early days of Hollywood and then became part of the burgeoning rock billboard scene in the 1960s - the locations have not changed.

Rousselet designed the Stones' billboards himself - all 109 of them. Then Black Kite's VFX Supervisor George Brunt, on-set VFX Supervisor Jonny Freeman and senior colourist Richard Fearon were tasked with putting them back on Sunset Boulevard, so they appear from the point of view of the car in which Sidney Sweeney is travelling.

“We took iconic archive footage of the band and used traditional comping and 2D and 3D roto methods to work the moving footage into each poster," says George Brunt, explaining the brief that they were given by Rousselet - who has worked with the Stones before, on the 2016 video for Ride Em On Down, starring Kristin Stewart.

As well as the archive footage, there was also new live footage to reflect every stage of the band, with the lyrics of Angry as part of the composition of each billboard. Brunt says that a variety of tools were employed in order for the Stones' performance of Angry to come to life with the vintage footage.

“The lyrics of the track were matched to the footage using a combination of lip-syncing and AI," he says. "We used 3D lighting to match the plates and replicate the quality and sheen of a classic billboard. The end result had to look slick, and working with different resolution types is challenging. The devil really is in the detail with this type of work but slick it looks and we love it.”

Jonny Freeman was on set for Black Kite, the one day shoot took place on Sunset Boulevard with a camera on the hero car, the team in a truck behind and LA police escorts in front and behind the action to keep the famous street clear. The camera was placed from the point of view of Sydney Sweeney to recreate the sensation of moving among the flow of the billboards on the Strip with the rock icons appearing larger than life the
whole way.

"It was essential to get the lighting just right for the VFX team back at the studio," says Freeman. "I went on a tech scout the week before and shot lighting reference images to make sure we had additional light passes to help bed in compositions in the final film."

Black Kite’s Rich Fearon, a long time collaborator of Rousselet, was in charge of the grade. The promo was shot on 35mm film, with Christopher Ripley as DOP, and this really enhanced the edgy LA look. 

“This grade was all about bringing out the brilliant LA light with a lot of contrast in the rich colour, whilst keeping the gritty texture of the film," says Fearon. “It’s always a pleasure to work with Francois and this time was almost an extension of the last Stones’ promo we worked on together, for Ride ‘Em on Down.

"I almost instinctively knew what he wanted and this was apparent when he saw the first pass and loved it!”