Director Francois Rousselet and Riff Raff Films reunite with The Rolling Stones for their first new music in 17 years for this music video “Angry," starring actress Sydney Sweeney and shot on 35mm film in L.A.
Before the music video era, there was a rock billboard scene in L.A. circa 1967 as a few independent minds in the music industry posted giant, temporary monuments to rock icons that said it all– larger than life, hand-painted homages that would chronicle rock forever, and it goes without saying The Rolling Stones had theirs. These incredible hand-painted billboards have almost all disappeared today, giving way to screens, but the locations haven’t changed. And so, a seed of an idea was born; what if “The Stones” could be brought to life performing “Angry” using their archive from live gigs, old videos, album iconography, oh and throw in a famous actress singing the song as she drove down Sunset Boulevard!
Rousselet designed all the 109 billboards along with the team at Black Kite led by George Brunt and Jonny Freeman who helped showcase the dynamic performances of archive footage of Mick, Keith, Ronnie, and the late Charlie Watts.
Rousselet said, “A music video idea that I’ve always wanted to make and kept closely guarded, waiting for a track like ‘Angry’ to show up! And it’s the Rolling Stones for f**k sake.”
Matthew Fone, Riff Raff EP/owner, said, “As soon as Francois said, “Don’t worry, it’s not that complicated to do”, I knew it would be the total opposite but when you have an idea so good, you put everything into it.”
Editor Dom Leung of editorial house Marsheen shared, “I’m always drawn to a challenging project and this video was the very definition of a labor of love. Sydney’s fantastic performance was a dream to put together. Sifting through decades of amazing Rolling
Stones material to find just the right sync was a painstaking needle in a haystack process. The irony of Mick singing ‘Don’t get angry with me’ was not lost on any of us at Marsheen.”
Brunt noted, “The lyrics of the track were matched to the footage using a combination of lip-syncing and AI. We used 3D lighting to match the plates and replicate the quality and sheen of a classic billboard. The result had to look slick and working with different resolution types was challenging. The devil really is in the detail with this type of work, but it looks slick, and we love it.”
