When a frazzled FKA twigs arrives to her tiny NY apartment after a rough day, she asks Siri for music. As HomePod fills the room with smooth immersive sound, the whole house comes alive and becomes her dance partner, transforming her mental and emotional space.

As impossible as it seemed, the challenge was to make an apartment our character’s dance partner, for real. Without digital VFX. As you’ll see in the demo film we created for this entry, we built a bespoke home environment using practical sets. The space itself became part of the choreography. Each moving structure was precisely engineered to move in synch to the song’s cadence. To make the walls extrude, we attached a hydraulic engine to a stage, programmed to stretch in time with a transition between segments. Another wall of color ribbons built over rails, allowed off-camera dancers to make it run backwards when the string crescendo kicked in. We attached lever mechanisms to furniture, so we could manually pull them out to the beat. Pixel stretch artwork provided the final look and feel to the environment. Every inch was meticulously art directed to enhance the expanding visual effect.

In 2018, Apple launched HomePod. A smart-speaker that can re-architect the acoustics of any space to deliver the highest-fidelity sound. Coupled with the intelligence of Siri and Apple Music integration, HomePod takes the home listening experience to a whole new level for anyone who loves and respects music.