Vol. 28
It’s the first Cut Culture of 2024, so we’re coming out swinging with some golden boy glory and an homage to Homerton. Then we’re racing from East London to Woking for a BTS view of our shoot at the McLaren Technology Centre, before crossing the finish line with an intro to our mates over at Lux Studio.
Cut Culture
Hey Jude.
Jude Bellingham has the world at his feet - and now he also has some Predators that he helped co-design on his feet. We’ll stop talking about his feet now. Bet they’re lovely, though. Granted, we don’t know exactly how involved with the design process Jude truly was, but if there’s anyone who can bang a hat-trick then moonlight as a creative consultant, it’s probably him. Possibly the most famous and best loved silhouette of all time, the 30th anniversary edition of the Predator saw a return to the aesthetics that made the boot blow up all those years ago. Such a massive release needed a massive launch video, and adi didn’t disappoint. In what’s been described as a comeback for ‘real football adverts’, adidas dropped this tour-de-force featuring Madrid’s man of the moment pinching a pair of Preds from a sub-terranean secret lab and taking them to the cage to rip some poor unsuspecting 5-a-side players to shreds. Iconic boots, iconic player, iconic ad. Now I want to see the sequel with Trent robbing a pair from the slightly less glamorous adidas Runcorn facility.
Grand Theft Auto: Homerton.
This was rather timely. Fresh off a conversation we were having in the office about that Guy Ritchie-directed Nike ad and how irresistibly compelling first-person POV content is, this tasty little number popped up blessing our feeds. Not only is Unknown T one of the biggest names in the UK music scene at the moment, he’s also just casually dropping some of the best videos about. Jumping on the GTA 6 zeitgeist with aplomb while giving it an authentic Homerton spin, this ad directed by BENJI for PLACES+FACES channels all that juicy ‘ready player one’ energy to see the world through the dark glasses of Unknown T on what we’ll assume is a standard day in his life. Easter eggs galore in East London. Really goes to show that a London-based GTA would slap differently. It also provides a nice contrast to the Drake x J. Cole video featured in the previous volume of Cut Culture (ironically titled ‘First Person Shooter’). The two videos come from diametrically-opposed ends of the budget continuum, but both manage to be eminently engaging for entitely different reasons. And for any concerned citizens we feel obliged to inform you that that is in fact a prop zoot in Unknown T’s hand. Probably.
BTS
Not to brag, but this was actually our second time in the McLaren Technology Centre. We don’t like to talk about it much; not because we’re modest, but because everything’s so secretive in that place with the amount of hush-hush new tech and designs knocking about that we’re sh*t scared of saying the wrong thing. It’s genuinely not dissimilar to that lair in the Jude Bellingham ad, just much friendlier and better lit.
Fresh off our last shoot supporting livery design for Google we were invited back by the US-based agency Laundry Service to talk to F1 drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri about what’s hiding away in their Google Chrome tabs.
After some quick internal decor adjustments (putting in a load of plants to make things look a bit friendlier and bit less Patrick Bateman), we took the guys through the script to get them loose and relaxed before cracking on. In hindsight they didn’t need much relaxing; I suppose when you’re used to driving towards a wall at a-million miles-an-hour a little interview is a cake walk.
Appropriately, speed was the name of the game, so we were able to rattle through everything we needed to get done before wrapping and handing the content back over to Laundry Service’s animation team in the States. Job’s a good’un. Check out our ‘Through the Lens’ edit below.
Radar
We’re doing something a little different for this month’s Radar, because why feature just one person when we can talk about an entire studio made up by a whole host of frightfully talented individuals? We were pondering how best to describe Lux Studio, but fortunately we don’t have to, because they’ve done it for us. In their own words, Lux are “one of the UK's leading stills & video production teams producing stunning content for iconic global brands”. Couldn’t have put it better ourselves, and that’s why we didn’t. We’ve worked with Lux twice now and can testify that they are capable of catering for all your shooting needs, from a high-end Speyside single malt product shoot with caviar and lobster gyozas aplenty to facilitating an authentic clubhouse feel for a rugby lookbook, neither of which we can currently show you but just trust us that they’re class. Scout’s honour, init. We’re hesitant to talk them up too much as we don’t want anyone nicking our studio time, but we would reluctantly encourage you to go check out more of Lux’s work on their Instagram and website.