Music Promo
- Brand development
- Video production
- Audio production
- Motion design
- Interactive design
Freak was born of a love of music and visual art. Our co-founders worked in some of the largest and most celebrated record labels, recording studios, production companies and music venues in the world, before taking what we learned and applying it to our own creative brand.
No one understands music like us. We are proud to work and collaborate with the finest, the freshest and the most established musicians and labels in the world to create music content that keeps those clicks coming.
NInja Tune
Warp Records
Warp (originally to be named Warped, but shortened for communication ease, and later expanded by the backronym “We Are Reasonable People”), owned and operated by Steve Beckett and Rob Mitchell (7) (who sadly passed away in 2001), is one of the world’s most respected and loved electronic and experimental dance labels. After many years in Sheffield, they are now based in London.
Soundcrash
Soundcrash Productions is one of the most forward thinking music promotions outfit in London and recently across the rest of the UK and Europe.
Rob Waller and his band of creatives spend their time putting on the best live shows and club nights they can imagine. Specialising in Hip Hop, Electronic and Alternative music from around the world, Soundcrash have been responsible for some of the most popular and talked about shows of the last few years, and hold an enviable reputation in the European Live music and club scene.
Johnnie Walker
- Video production
- Audio production
- Motion design
The concept was created by Diageo Future – the producer’s innovation arm – and described as “a cutting-edge, online whisky personalisation experience that enables people to purchase new and exclusive Johnnie Walker whiskies matched to an individual’s flavour preferences”. We produced this promo film alongside our friends at branding agency Hey Big Man to promote the concept and the launch of the product.
The A-Z of YouTube
- Sound design
- Mix
We worked with directors Adam Bolt and Hoku Uchiyama at Partizan on this celebration of YouTube’s 10th Year Anniversary.
It was a huge project featuring 74 references to some of YouTube’s best known video clips, and employing over 15 different animation techniques involving amazing artists from around the world.
Process
We began by going through and working out what audio was usable from the YouTube clips, as a lot of these were recorded on phones or other devices with no proper microphones. Therefore we had to do some audio restoration to clean up the recordings and make them sound as good as possible. After this we dropped in the amazing Blackalicious track Alphabet Aerobics and set to work designing the background ambiences, sound effects and transition sounds needed to tie the image, music, and sync sound together, and to bring the video to life. WIth so many elements needing bespoke sounds created by us, we ended up with over 300 audio tracks all stacked with effects being used for this 2:45 video.
Paradise Island Festival
- Video production
- Audio production
- Motion design
- Brand development
- Digital campaign
- Print campaign
The Paradise Island Arts and Music Festival was held in the iconic setting of Koh Samui, Thailand. Working closely with our friends at Soundcrash the Freak team created an integrated marketing campaign encompassing 65 multi-channel deliverables to brand the festival and promote the event, which featured legendary acts from around the world – Goldie, The Pharcyde, LTJ Bukem, Krafty Kuts, Maribou State, DJ Kentaro, and many more.
Highlights Film
We were all kinda bored of the typical ‘high shutter speed, fast – slow – fast’, idiomatically predictable nature of most festival highlights reels. We wanted to add something with a personality that was more unique to Paradise Island. We took the live footage from the event and augmented it with a papercraft-inspired animated world and drew some inspiration from the concepts of travel films to deliver the video in a punchy and energetic montage that goes beyond tickertape slowmos.
Brand In Situ
Climate Coalition
- Sound design
- Mix
As lovers of the wild and Scotland especially, we were very pleased to work with director Richard Paris Wilson on this ad for the Climate Coalition.
The film was created to serve as a reminder of mankind’s connection with nature and offer food for thought about the fragility of our planet.
This was used by the Climate Coalition, to promote their ‘Go for Zero’ campaign, after the IPCC’s devastating report about the impact of Climate Change.
PROCESS
This brief was all about adding emotional weight and tying together the beautifully shot landscapes and the more abstract images to create a powerful amalgamation of sound and image.
We began by using our extensive sound library to evoke the landscapes and bring the natural world to life, adding original sound creations from analogue hardware for elements such as atmospheres and drones to instill a sense of urgency, finally designing sound effects to give impact and movement to the more abstract images.
When approaching the dialogue, we wanted a sense of intimacy to give the impression that the narrator is speaking to you, up close, directly into your ear.
The music is a powerful part of this film so we made sure that the sound design was embedded into this and didn’t just sit on top. The finished soundtrack is a hyperreal sound journey where at times it’s difficult to discern where the music stops and the sound design begins.
London Interdisciplinary School
- Video production
- Audio production
- Motion design
The London Interdisciplinary School is the first new university to open its doors in the UK for 40 years. Their focus is on multi-faceted problem solving, rather than traditional, subject based learning – students can expect a single course module to cover everything from genome editing and international relations to probabilistic thinking and outcome modelling. We were delighted to be asked by our friends at Ignite PR to help them design a modern and slick video campaign that represented the values of this progressive and forward thinking school.
Client Testimonial
“We worked closely with We Are Freak to realise the vision for a new University launch video – London Interdisciplinary School. From the outset, they understood what we were trying to achieve creatively and brought it to life wonderfully. The client was over the moon with the result, the balance between animation, story and impact was executed perfectly. We couldn’t be happier.”
Sam Trainor-Buckingham, Ignite Managing Director
Behind The Scenes
We interviewed ten of the founding committee of the London Interdisciplinary School. This included representatives from the London Metropolitan Police, entrepreneurs such as the founder of Innocent Smoothies and Propercorn, industry and recruitment specialists, and LIS co-founders.
PAUL SMITH
- Location recording
- Sound design
- Broadcast mix
World Championship cyclist Ben Savage put the new range of Paul Smith suits to the test at London’s Hauser & Wirth Gallery on a set designed by Sonja Klaus.
Freak provided end-to-end audio services, including location audio on set and post production audio.
PROCESS
We started by composing an electronic music track, crafted from recordings made with a bike to complement the imagery. Director Michael Tamman liked the bike sounds so much that we were asked if we could compose the track entirely of bike sounds. Always seeking a challenge, we broke out the contact microphones and proceeded to create bass drums from hitting the tires with drum sticks, more percussive sounds by recording the chain, gear and brake levers, and drones using the cello bow on the spokes. With this palette of sounds we hit the studio to process our recordings until we achieve the final result, with what sounds like warped vocals singing over the top at the end.
The final composition is composed entirely of bike recordings made in the Freak sound studio and we got so carried away with this one that we even coded our own bespoke software sampler / manipulator, to be released soon, as we couldn’t find anything suitable off the shelf to create what we were hearing in our heads!
Pho – Who you work pho
- Video production
- Audio production
- Motion design
Stephen and Juliette Wall started travelled to Vietnam and fell in love with the amazing local streetfood – Pho. They made the decision to start a restaurant serving phở while sat on high stools, slurping pho bo, in Ho Chi Minh City and opened their first restaurant in London 2005. Fast-forward to today and Pho is still a family-run business serving great value, healthy Vietnamese street food that is cooked fresh every day for thousands of happy customers.
When Freak were asked to contribute to Pho’s award winning video campaigns, the creative team were inspired by the story behind the creation of the brand to create the ‘Who Do You Work Pho?’ campaign films, as well as the ‘Tis the Hangover Season’ film which works with Pho’s playful and laid back brand.
Recruitment Campaign
Pho didn’t want a traditional recruitment film that told the history of Pho, wanting to capture the energy and freshness of their food, restaurants and people. Freak were asked to create a film that captured this ethos alongside the laid back attitude that makes their restaurants so popular.
Shot live at Pho locations across London, Freak created two punchy short films with a handheld camera and slick editing to achieve the non-traditional style they were looking for.
A Successful Heist
Behind The Scenes
