Love for cats and tech behind the scenes of Leah Dou “CATS”

Leah Dou (Katie Chan Productions Co. Ltd.) is a 23 years old singer-songwriter and a cat lover. 

Three years since her last record, she has released her new album ‘GSG MIXTAPE’ on November 27th. The 13-track album is like a musical diary, capturing the challenges, thoughts, hopes, and beliefs held by a 23 year old experiencing the world as it continues to unfold. We worked closely with Leah to express this world visually, across album artwork, merchandise, social media, and three music videos. 

Alongside the album release, comes the third music video created by Wieden+Kennedy, ‘CATS.’

This music video's story is about the robot cats dream of being someone’s real-life cat. 

This film, directed by Artem Skiy (DMBZ) in collaboration with PAN Inc. lead by Hiroyuki Hori, uses a mixture of filmic techniques, including 3D video processing, analog video and other digital distortions. The result is a very unique aesthetic. 

For the first part, we brought to life our voxelated robot vision through a depth camera, reconstructing the world with blocks and adding analog glitches using an analog video player.

In the middle, we reveal the owner of the POV - the robot cat - designed from scratch, powered down into sleep mode and left behind in the lab.

Then something strange happens - we dive into the cat's dream, drowsy and psychedelic distortion with slitscan action here and there, peculiar colors, replaying the memories from that day. Hoping to become a real cat one day.

The cat wakes up, pulled back into reality with its robot vision, starting a new day with the lab experiments.

Will the robot cat become a real cat someday? Nobody knows.

In spite of being casted as Bad Cat, Cool Cat, Smooth Cat, they were all good cats, behaving super friendly and cooperative, with good acting skills. With having many cat lovers in the production team we couldn’t stop smiling during the entire shoot.

Creative Credits

KATIE CHAN PRODUCTIONS CO. LTD / GREY WATERS LTD
Artist: Leah Dou
Managing Director: Katie Chan
Project Director: Nikki Lam
Senior Project Manager: Angela Wong
Project Manager: Jennifer Lau
Project Consultant: Fran Chan

WIEDEN+KENNEDY TOKYO
Executive Creative Director: Scott Dungate
Managing Director: Ryan Fisher
Head of Production: Kerli Teo
Creative Director: Kyoko Yonezawa
Copywriter: Nedal Ahmed
Designer: Donna Kwon
Content Producer: Ty Demura
Communications Planning Director: Justin Lam
Account Supervisor: Mai Ebine
Account Executive: Asako Takahashi

DMBZ
Executive Producer/1st Assistant Director: David Dicembre
Director: Artem Skiy
Director of Photography/1st AC: Flávio Gusmão
Production Manager: Eiko Kikuchi
DIT: Alexis Wuillaume
Gaffer: Yosuke Shimada
Digital Artist: Yuri Vasilyev
Hair & Make Up: Mika Furukawa
Casting Director: Arno Le Gall
Cast: Yoshino Pro Inc.
Studio: Planear
Animal Production: M’s dogs
Puppeteer: James Wright

PAN CO., LTD.
Creative Technologist/Programmer: Hiroyuki Hori
Programmer: Yuma Taesu
Programmer: Ayumu Nagamatsu