VFX Artist Defends Coldplay’s ‘Hymn For The Weekend’ Video

We’d previously told you about why you need to chill about the new Coldplay video and now we have the VFX artist Yaron Yeshinski, who worked on the visual effects for the video telling us that ‘It came out of Respect and Appreciation’. The beautiful, controversial video went viral the second it came out for a number of reasons. The Indian audience was excited because of the location of the video and the much-hyped presence of Bollywood actress Sonam Kapoor.

It’s set in a full Hindu oriented landscape with orange-robed Sadhus, street children celebrating holi, Beyonce playing an Indian Actress, 3 seconds of Sonam Kapoor, dilapidated temples, Chris Martin in a kitsch cab decorated by a Pakistani designer, and other typical street shots. It looks so amazingly exotic that the YouTube video clocked over 32 million in just a week.

The Yaron Yeshinski Studio of Tel Aviv in Israel took 4 months to complete the video editing. Billboard interviewed the talented VFX artist to pick his brain about what he thinks about the video. He’s been doing VFX for 20 years and this isn’t his first music video, having worked with the Black Eyed Peas before. The video director, Ben Mor already had a storyboard planned out, and wanted the ingredients to be as Indian as possible. Almost every shot has some VFX editing in it which resulted in a gorgeously surreal video. According to the director, this video is a love letter to India and even though there is a lot of backlash regarding cultural appreciation versus appropriation, Yaron would love if Coldplay and Beyonce came to Israel to shoot such an amazing video. He thinks that it is a mythical, beautiful land, and a lot of research went into making sure that the video is nothing but respectful.