Nexus director Johnny Kelly has directed a new film to promote YouTube Play – a collaborative project between YouTube and the Guggenheim Foundation that seeks to showcase the very best creative videos from around the world...

The idea behind YouTube Play is that any non-commercial films posted on YouTube in the last two years can be considered - and new submissions can be posted on YouTube and then submitted to youtube.com/play. A jury of film buffs will decide which works will be presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in a special exhibition in October this year. Simultaneous presentations of the work will also take place at the Guggenheim museums in Berlin, Bilbao and Venice. Submissions close July 31.

Here's the film Kelly directed to promote the project:

"My brief was to create something that would reference the variety of different worlds created by youtube users," explains Kelly, "and also drum up some excitement. With all these different worlds in the animation, I wanted to get across that idea of clicking on something without knowing exactly what you are going to see - just like on YouTube. It could be the greatest thing you've seen in your life, or it could be a sneezing panda - or one and the same!

"I collaborated with a production designer Graham Staughton who, along with his team, built literally everything you see in the whole film," Kelly continues. "On a very tight time and budget, everything was made from scratch except for the fake foliage in the forest sequence, which was stolen from a pot plant."

As is the way these days, there is making-of film hosted on, but of course, YouTube:

Credits:

Director: Johnny Kelly
Production company: Nexus
Executive producers: Julia Parfitt
Producer: Liz Chan & Beccy McCray
Production manager: Jo Bierton
Creative development: Beccy McCray
Director of photography: Matthew Day
Filmed at Clapham Road Studios
Production designer: Graham Staughton
Stop motion animator: Matthew Cooper
Compositing: Alasdair Brotherston
3D previs: Michael Greenwood, Matt Clark, Christian Johnson
Client: Across The Pond Productions | Creative Lab EMEA - Google
Executive producer: Rachna Suri
Music: Niwouinwouin Courtesy of Ego Twister Records
Sound design: Barnaby Templer at Fon

For more info on YouTube Play, visit youtube.com/play