Created as the closing scene of Coldplay’s 44-minute visual album A Film For The Future, this CG outro by Clara Bacou was designed for both screen and 360° immersive experience.
Commissioned for the final track “We Pray” from the Moon Music album (2024), the sequence visualizes a symbolic journey from shadow to light: a cracked, glowing moon breaks through a dark, tangled forest, representing themes of prayer, hope, and emotional resilience.
Directed and animated by Clara Bacou, this outro sequence for Coldplay’s A Film For The Future visual album brings the themes of hope and transformation to life through symbolic CG storytelling. It debuted globally on YouTube and as part of an immersive installation at Lightroom in London and Seoul—projected at monumental scale across four walls and floor, enveloping audiences in Coldplay’s sonic and visual world.
Produced by Partizan and led by Coldplay’s creative team, the film brought together 150+ international artists to interpret the album’s themes through their own mediums.
Credits
Director + CG - Clara Bacou
Blender Artist - Emilien Colombier
Animator - Violette Talalaeff
Production Company - Partizan
Head of Music Videos - Lauren Mills
Head of Animation - Duncan Gaman
Animation Production Assistant - Sharlene Oola
Commissioner - Sam Seager
Music Video Rep - Claire Stubbs at Mouthpiece Rep
MD - Jenny Beckett
Head of Production - Ella More O’Ferrall
Beyond the standard music video format, A Film For The Future was designed to fully immerse audiences in its visual world. Clara’s moonlit forest sequence was not only rendered for 2D screens but also expanded into a panoramic, floor-to-ceiling experience. At Lightroom London (King’s Cross) and Lightroom Seoul, the visuals enveloped viewers within a purpose-built 360° projection space. Inside these venues, state-of-the-art spatial audio and towering 11-metre high projections across four walls (and even underfoot) allowed visitors to be inside the artwork.
Spectators could stand amid the digital forest as the cracked moon ascended around them, its light sweeping over the room in sync with Coldplay’s music. This innovative installation ran as a limited exhibition starting 22 January 2025 (timed with the film’s online premiere) and played on selected evenings into March 2025 in London, with parallel screenings in Seoul. The immersive album experience heightened the emotional impact of the visuals – every texture, motion, and light beam was magnified at immense scale, surrounding audiences with the project’s core message of finding light in darkness. By preparing the content for both traditional film and 360° formats, the team ensured Coldplay’s vision for the album Moon Music reached fans in an unusually direct, experiential way.
Realizing the ethereal aesthetic of the 'We Pray' outro required both technical skill and artistic vision. Clara and her 3D team Emilien Colombier and Violette Talalaeff, built the CG environment using a blend of industry-leading tools – Blender for animation and scene assembly, ZBrush for sculpting organic forms, and Substance for rich texturing and materials. The cracked moon and forest were carefully crafted with these tools to achieve a hyper-real yet dreamlike quality: detailed enough to feel tangible, but stylized to evoke a sense of spiritual symbolism.
Throughout the process, Clara worked closely with a passionate team to bring this concept to life. The project was produced by Partizan, who assembled talent across animation and film disciplines to support Coldplay’s creative brief. From initial storyboard to final render, collaboration was key – each contributor helped shape the final atmosphere of the piece. This segment being outro shot of the music video meant not only creating stunning visuals but also harmonizing the chapter with the wider 'tapestry' of the film. The final composition is a testament to collective creativity: disparate styles united by common themes of hope and transformation, much like the album itself.
This sequence explores early visual concepts for the moon’s final transformation in “We Pray,” the concluding moment of A Film For The Future. Developed as part of the lookdev process, these frames tested a more dramatic, fiery destruction—where the moon fractures and erupts into cosmic flame, surrounded by blooming energy and celestial debris.
The goal was to convey a visceral release—an emotional climax representing rebirth through chaos. Each version tested the balance between intensity and transcendence, set within a star-charged, symbolic skyscape.
Ultimately, Coldplay opted for a more hopeful interpretation: glowing cracks instead of full combustion, offering a quieter, more meditative symbolism of endurance and light breaking through darkness.
Crafted in Blender, ZBrush, and Substance, this visual R&D was part of building a storyworld that could be felt both on screen and within the 360° immersive album experience at Lightroom London and Seoul.
This 2D animatic was an early visual development piece for the ‘WE PRAY outro in A Film For The Future. Painted in Photoshop and assembled in Premiere, the sequence served as an initial creative blueprint for the full 3D production.