Heckler and Aussie Director Daniel Askill Unite for Lady Gaga’s ‘Stupid Love’

Lady Gaga’s latest music video ‘Stupid Love’ has broken new ground after being filmed entirely using the latest Apple iPhone 11 Pro. Directed by Australian filmmaker Daniel Askill with post production by Sydney based design, animation and VFX house Heckler, the video has already amassed more than 24.7 million views since launching on the weekend.

Set in the futuristic world of Chromatica, which is also the title of Gaga’s latest studio album, the video was shot on location at Trona Pinnacles in California.

Daniel, who also directed the ARIA Award winning ‘Chandelier’ video for Aussie singer Sia and is the co-founder of Collider, asked Heckler to handle postproduction for ‘Stupid Love’ after working with the company on his debut feature which will be released in the coming months. Heckler was charged with creating all of the visual effects and handling the colour grading for the super-saturated vision of Chromatica.

Catherine Terracini, creative producer at Heckler said: “The opportunity for us to work on Stupid Love arose from our current collaboration with Dan Askill on his feature-length film. At its core, the feature has an experimental nature to it and so too, Gaga's Stupid Love required technical adaptability and experimentation to really push the VFX and colour into the otherworldy place we created. It was a dream piece for the Heckler team."

Heckler’s VFX Supervisor Ryan Trippensee was on set in the US during the shoot, with the Heckler team having just two weeks to create the crystal pinnacles and complete the complicated colour grade.

Greg 'Elvis' Constantaras, lead colourist ay Heckler added: “The concept for Stupid Love was highly stylised with an Anime like quality. It presented both technical and artistic challenges. Incorporating VFX crystal pinnacles with highly saturated and contrasted imagery while remaining complementary to the various tribe colours, skin tones of the talent and natural desert landscape was a delicate balance to maintain in creating the world of 'Chromatica'. We pushed the colour through a number of iterations until we landed on a hero blend of grades that maximised the metallic, punchy frames we see in the final version."