The making of a film...web site

Baz Luhrmann makes awe-inspiring films for a mainstream audience. My role throughout the six-month project was as Creative Lead, responsible for driving the vision, distilling the creative strategy into project deliverables, liaising with Baz and managing the Web team for delivery to Twentieth Century Fox (US).

The project involved two URLs: www.moulinrougemovie.com and www.clubmoulinrouge.com.

Conceptually speaking

Baz wanted to create an experience that would allow the audience to discover the film's theme, its characters and the historical background of the Moulin Rouge.

To provide a visual direction for the site that would compare with the film's look I needed to understand how the film would be artistically enhanced in post-production. This would help people visiting the website to maintain a visual continuity between the site and the film.

Over a two-month conceptual period I worked with Baz to evolve the original concepts through a "grunge filter" to produce a Monty Python'esque view of the Moulin Rouge world.

What if...

The objective of ClubMR was to get the audience to create a parallel between the Moulin Rouge and today's nightclubs as a way to understanding how the real Moulin Rouge fit into the lives of Parisians. The preferred direction was to create the possibility that the Moulin Rouge of the 1700's existed in the heart of contemporary New York.

The visuals of the site show the Parisian club in a grungy New York setting, the central attraction for a queue of clubbers waiting behind the velvet rope. Nicole Kidman's character Satine provides a provocative glimpse of what 'might' be in the Club. The visual design was also inspired by the Beatle's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band album cover, which places famous people surrounding the Beatles.