The Hoxton is relaunching its city guide platform The Localist. The platform offers its guests a way into the cool cultural convergences of whichever city guests find themselves staying in. To ensure they’re tapping into a more authentic, interesting flavour of the cities they’re exploring. To kick things off, we start on home turf in London for Record Store Day 2024 with one of The Hoxton’s Neighbourhood talents Sonny Rooney aka Pinky Perzelle - a DJ and Producer hailing from West London.
Starting at The Hoxton Holborn, Sonny takes us on a journey into the city through his musical eyes. From Denmark Street where he tells tales about dream guitars before we plunge into the heart of Soho to crate-dig through classics at Rough Trade before finally arriving at the world-famous Phonica Records for a short Q&A with one of the co-founders, Nick.
Our vision for the creative direction was to make the film feel like a coffee table book. Like a Taschen title. Partly inspired by The Hoxton’s neatly stylised interiors, which can range from modernist 70’s vibes to Prohibition Era 1920’s art deco. But the creative direction was also partly inspired by the film’s backing track ‘’No Games’’. A smooth, smoky, sultry-sounding release from Sonny and Eda Eden. The song itself sounds like a coffee table book! So, we leant into this with our blocky opening montage, our use of handheld shots throughout, fade and wipe transitions that feel like turning a page, crash zooms for when you notice a new speck of detail in a picture and you pull your eye right into the book to be sure you aren’t seeing things. Then in our colour grade, we wanted a consistently natural-looking picture that accentuated our locations, allowing the viewer to absorb Sonny’s words and insight. Like any well-designed book should do.
Big team effort, as always.
Director: Damola Oladapo (@damolastayup)
DOP: Ola Shoyinka (@Ola_Shoyinka_)
Editor: Jamie Robertson (@jjro_)
1st AC: Olivia Prendergast (@thatwentsouthsofast)
Gaffer: Will Sharp (@Will_Sharp_)
Sound Recordist: Jacob Evans (@jacobevans.sound)
Storyboard Artist: Duane Uba (@duane_uba)
Colorist: Anibal Castano (@castanoanibal)
Stills Photographer (@mohamedragahmed)