Vol. 26
This volume of Cut Culture will take you on a voyage through time, space… and France, feat. a Hemingwayesque swan song and a mind-bending music video. And nuestra casa es su casa, so we’ll also be taking you behind the scenes pitchside at the Home of Football before finishing things up with an intro to the sharp shooter on our latest campaign (which is coming soon…).
Cut Culture
Are You Still Watching?
We wanted to start this Cut Culture on a positive note, so here’s a crushing reminder of our slowly decaying existence in a world morphing before our very eyes into something we will soon cease to recognise. Netflix have officially said goodbye to DVDs. And considering that their original business model revolved entirely around the little shiny disks just a short 25 years ago, this is quite a big moment. It’s like if KFC were to stop selling chicken, Toys’R’Us were to stop selling toys, or if Jordan Peterson suddenly started saying it doesn’t really matter whether you make your bed. Such an epoch-defining farewell warranted a proper send-off, so Netflix have done just that with this video offering a nostalgic celebration of the red envelope era. And it’s a testament to the execution that it can make you feel wistful for a bygone time even if, like most of us under the age of 90, you have never once received a Netflix DVD in the post and haven’t even watched nor thought about a DVD for the better part of a decade. Or maybe it’s just the dial-up Blink-182 soundtrack that’s enough to transport even the most world-weary of grown adults back to the halcyon days when pop punk reigned supreme and people still went outside. Memento Mori.
Hang it in The Louvre.
In the age of TikTok, Reels, attention deficit disorders, and… was that a squirrel… what were we talking about again? Oh yeah, with our species-wide collective attention span rapidly diminishing, we appreciate that it is downright insolent of us to expect you to watch a 4-minute video. You could probably get through at least 20 YouTube Shorts in that time. But hear us out. Directed by Paul Trillo and shot at the Musée du Louvre, Jacques’ new music video is an absolute tour de force, fusing traditional VFX with a variety of AI techniques to create a genuinely unique aesthetic and offer an alternative to how visual effects will be approached in the future. A leak in the ceiling of the Louvre pulls Jacques into an emotional vortex where a cosmic teardrop dissolves the museum’s masterpieces into their rawest forms, teaching Jacques lessons along the way such as the Newtonian apothegm “each action has an opposite and equal reaction” and that “there is no ecstasy without agony”, which sounds like something a sadistic drug dealer might say. And that’s appropriate, because this video may make you feel as if you’ve been slipped something. Incredible work and a great example of someone employing boundary-pushing AI techniques not purely for the sake of novelty but to enable them to enter new creative territories previously thought to be unaccessible. Tres bien.
BTS
When you’ve got your greasy mitts on the latest instalment of one of English football’s most iconic balls, it’s only right that you would launch it in one of football’s most iconic stadiums. Especially when that iconic ball is to be used in an iconic cup competition, the final of which will be played at that iconic stadium. We’ve said iconic too much, haven’t we?
We went down to the Home of Football, Wembley Stadium, one particularly miserable Thursday morning to shoot the new Mitre Ultimax FA Cup range. We should point out that ‘miserable’ oughtn’t be interpreted in the pejorative; nothing says real football better than a pissing sky.
With the FA Cup being such an important asset for Mitre, we needed to underscore the connection between the brand, the competition, the stadium and the wealth of shared history between all of the above. But we promise our aforementioned greasy mitts didn’t lay a finger on the cup. We’ve met the FA Cup’s bouncers and were left in no doubt that they were not to be trifled with.
We couldn’t just leave it at that, though. As much as Ultimax x The FA Cup x Wembley is one hell of a trio (and did we mention iconic?), it is perhaps a bit obvs. But do you know what isn’t obvs? Inviting 100 of the latest and greatest in football culture to a launch party in Shoreditch to eat bagels, drink Carling, and listen to the absolute raconteur that is Clive Tyldesley talk about getting pinned up against a wall by Joe Royle. Not for me, Clive.
Check out some of the campaign stills and launch video as well as some shots from the event below.
Stefan is a South African photographer now working out of Sweden. He got his start in fashion and has been able to transition a considered aesthetic into sports and lifestyle while retaining his signature artistic integrity, creating a really premium feel and always elevating the subject matter. We’ve also just spent a week on set with him and can vouch for his implacable calmness paired with an almost oxymoronic quickness of thought. He exudes confidence and has an uncanny ability to seemingly slow time down when working under pressure within tight deadlines. He’s becoming incredibly sought-after and we recommend buying stock in Stefan now. Check out more of his work on his website and Instagram.