Mirada on Creating the VFX for Katy Perry's Roar
Flash is required! --
By: Meleah Maynard
The music video for Katy Perry's single, Roar, may have been shot at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, but it looks like the heart of the jungle thanks to an assortment of trained animals and the impressive array of visual effects created by Los Angeles-based Mirada. Working with Motion Theory directors Grady Hall and Mark Kudsi, Mirada had just three weeks to do all of the post-production for the nearly five-minute video.
Mindful of the challenging schedule, Mirada made the most of that time by employing a variety of software and hardware, including CINEMA 4D, After Effects, Houdini, Nuke and Flame. They also took the time to select the right artists, in-house and freelance, for every aspect of the project.
We wanted to pay homage to the Jane Of the Jungle style and genre, so finding the right artists for that look was crucial, recalls Jonathan Wu, Mirada's creative director. Tools are great because they allow artists to express themselves, but the artists really bring things to life.
Enhancing the Narrative
Though the post-production deadline was tight, the process was made easier by the fact that Mirada was actively involved in the making of the video from the beginning, starting with conception. And because Hall and Kudsi are well aware of what can be achieved in post-production, they planned their shots accordingly with input from the team at Mirada. We started talking right away about the visuals we would need to complement the story, anything that would help reinforce the narrative, says VFX supervisor Michael Shelton.
Shelton and Wu were also on set to partner with the directors on pinpointing instances where the narrative could be enhanced with effects. That kind of input on creative decisions made the project even more fun and challenging, Shelton says. It also helped ensure that they would have everything they needed when it was crunch time. When you shoot something as ambitious as this, it's a constantly evolving picture that reveals itself as the director makes decisions to improve the story and look of the video, so you have to be there to roll with the punches and figure out the best approach.
By way of example, Shelton points to the moment when the crew realized that the green screen they had wasn't large enough to accommodate the size of the elephant they were shooting. So he was able to troubleshoot on set, knowing it would need to be rotoscoped as soon as post-production started.
Animals are always a wildcard on set, Shelton explains, because, like kids, you can never be entirely certain what they'll do. It's tricky because you have to wait and see what the animals can and can't do, he says, explaining that things like how the animal's trajectory changed when jumping form platform to platform often had to be massaged in post-production. This was exactly the case in shooting the tiger, so the tiger and Katy were shot as separate plates and composited together for the final shot.
A Team Effort
In all, there were 139 shots in Roar that incorporated visual effects, including 2D animation, matte paintings, particle effects, 3D and a lot of heavy compositing. Artists primarily worked in teams, handing shots off to the next person in the pipeline as required. Hours were long, but what kept people going (beyond energy drinks, snacks and coffee) was the energy and sense of camaraderie that surrounded the project. It was really a passion project because work like this doesn't come around very often, so everybody really embraced it and did their best, Shelton says.
One of the most striking visual effects in the video happens when Perry stoops by a pool of water and breaks into Roar's empowering chorus for the first time. As she sings, blinking fireflies move gracefully around her before coming together in the air to form the head of a roaring tiger. After first studying footage of how fireflies move and light up and dim back down, Mirada opted to use CINEMA 4D to create different iterations of the fireflies because the 3D software would allow them to make changes quickly and easily.
We knew we wanted the fireflies to hover and dissipate, but we needed to see what that looked like and make several changes, so we chose CIN EMA 4Dbecause it's artist friendly and fast, Shelton explains. Using several particle tools in CINEMA 4D, artists were able to alternate between MoGraph, Thinking Particles or X-Particles, whichever got the job done the fastest, depending on the shot. Mirada artists chose MoGraph for the ambient firefly shots because a basic random noise effector can animate several spheres around a general area. Setup was simple with few parameters and it provided realistic results, especially with CINEMA 4D's Physical Render Motion Blur setting that added the firefly trail.
The tiger roar shot was a bit more complicated. To create the fireflies that buzz around the environment and then gravitate towards the center to the tiger's head, a combination of X-Particles and Thinking Particles was used. X-Particles was faster to set up: only a volume emitter, an attractor and a few deflectors were needed to guide the fireflies to the center in a natural manner. Once the fireflies reached the center, they were killed off and Thinking Particles was used to emit from pre-rendered tiger footage to drive the firefly birth and color. Varying the intensity and direction in Thinking Particles made the roar very expressive and magical. After Effects was then used to add color and glow to the fireflies as well as add their reflections in the water.
CINEMA 4D was also used to help test techniques for the effect that called for a swarm of fireflies to gather and take the shape of a roaring tiger h
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Mirada on Creating the VFX for Katy Perry's Roar 
