Click 3x, led by VFX supervisor/lead Flame artist Mark Szumski, completed a series of promotional spots for the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards that celebrate the show's return to New York City. The videos pay homage to the theatrical classic musical West Side Story, featuring show host Russell Brand and VMA-nominated musicians performing a re-creation of the signature tune Tonight throughout a series of original Manhattan sets.

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The spots were produced individually and then edited together as one fully-mixed anthem. Each has a distinct look and feature some of the biggest names in the music business belting out a hope-filled tune in anticipation of the night ahead.

Ne-Yo, in classic Michael Jackson-style attire dances his way through a graffiti-laced junkyard. Swanky Katy Perry hustles up an attitude in a rooftop garden. Glamorous Taylor Swift sings in the rain out of the open window of a taxi. Cobra Starship slams through the subway in a musical parade while Leighton Meester sings on the steps. And a cane-swinging Russell Brand sings about the awaiting night's events through the city's gritty back streets. Each of the bits uses the network's iconic spaceman statuettes, a hallmark of the VMAs since their inception.

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The various shoots each required different locations—inside and outside, on-stage and off—shot at various times of day. Click 3x worked with MTV director Sevi Peter-Thomas and producer Kris Walter to create a campaign that maintained a theatrical performance without compromising each artist's contemporary style.

To ensure a successful delivery, the creative and production teams from Click 3x and MTV coordinated so that the live-action and post compositing, 3D, 2D and color correct would be consistent and clear.

Peter-Thomas utilized RED cameras for all spots. Post Millennium edited the footage and delivered EDLs to Click 3x, which would conform by importing the footage from the Apple Final Cut Pro projects using Crimson, creating 2K DPX sequences. The creative team then began working between two Flames and CGI pulling together a variety of elements. Each scene had a distinct set of needs, ranging from providing atmosphere, creating skyline elements in CGI, lighting changes, and even compositing shots from multiple days. The final composites were brought to a DI process at Company 3 for a final color balance.

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"Our team literally had to change the world with each shoot," noted Click 3x's Szumski. "Katy Perry's New York skyline was composited behind her on bluescreen. The interior of a Brooklyn studio became a junkyard beneath the Brooklyn Bridge for Ne-Yo's spot. Using HDRI imagery, we transformed a daytime shot of a downtown Manhattan back alley into Russell Brand's nighttime jaunt to Radio City Music Hall. Taylor Swift's stunning Times Square cab ride was shot in a Nashville studio. Each shot had a different set of compositing challenges, but MTV's director, producer, and DP were all really easy to work with and the shots turned out perfectly."

MTV tapped Click 3x to assist with the campaign after several successful collaborations earlier in the year, including the See You Sunday promos and packaging, and The Phone and Star Trek promotional campaigns.

"Click 3x is uniquely positioned to work on this campaign both because of our existing relationship with the pros at MTV and the unique technical and creative skill set that we bring," stated Click 3x executive producer Connor Swegle. "Mark's technical expertise enables him to work closely with the live-action team to tackle the unique challenges of throughout preproduction and on set, while his creative abilities are hands on with clients and the internal team to guide the post process. Anthony Filipakis, our head of CGI, really nailed the spots' photo-real 3D needs, even creating an original Radio City Music Hall element to drop into a downtown alleyway, and John Budion was able to take his understanding of the creative needs from supervising on set in Nashville and bring that to his creative process on Flame."

"This was a really high-profile project—one of the main efforts on MTV's calendar, and we were really pleased that they selected us for the challenge," says Click 3x president Peter Corbett. "The logistics of coordinating the talent over multiple shoot dates and locations required close collaboration with MTV's team. Our team did a great job bringing some of the most talented musicians on the scene today together to create a memorable campaign that will not only drive interest in the network's annual award show, but also managed to honor the legacy and image of West Side Story, one of America's most iconic brands."

The 2009 MTV Video Music Awards were broadcast live from New York's Radio City Music Hall on Sept. 13 on MTV.