(Don't) Give Hate A Chance

This is Jamiroquai's first ever animated promo video. The video was directed by Alex & Martin, who are French directors Alexandre Courtes and Martin Fougerole. They have directed videos for other artists including U2, Kylie Minogue and The White Stripes.

The video was completed in mid October 2005 and to promote it, Sony BMG organised a number of outdoor showings of the video in central London. On Friday 14 October the video was projected onto walls including a car park in the Soho district of London and also against the walls of the Chelsea Barracks military grounds in London. Jay even came along to watch the first viewing of the video in Soho.

At the end of October a second version of the video appeared, which replaced the earlier versions on music television channels. This second version contains a number of changes, including the original "white line" ground being replaced by plants and rocks, and the final minute of the video which has very different animation to the original version.

• Director: Alex & Martin
• Production date: October 2005
• Production company: Partizan
• Mike O'Keefe (Sony BMG)
• Isabella Parish
• Production Manager: Pia Dueholm
• Motion Capture: Artem Digital
• Post-production: Machine Molle - Paris
• UK single release date: 7 November 2005
• Filmstrip:
  • Original Version
  • Second Version

An article at Shots.net in October 2005 printed the following:

The video is a mix of simple monochrome 2D line drawn backgrounds with more sophisticated and multicoloured 3D characters. It features an animated version of Jay Kay himself, naturally, complete with suitably outrageous trademark hat, trying to intervene to prevent discrimination between a variety of multi-coloured characters. His reward for this sterling work is all manner of injuries from laser's, tanks and bombs. We then get a series of politically charged vignettes showing further variations on the theme of hate and violence.

"The idea was to express the words behind his song: man and nature, corruption, war, racism and how one problem leads to another," Alex told shots.net, "We wanted to present these statements in an acceptable fashion through the simple animation and generic characters."

Jay Kay's moves were modelled after the man himself, "He came in for a day and we filmed him dancing using caption sensors that were stuck all over his body, and then that information was transferred into the animation," explains Martin.

The video took seven weeks to put together, using Maya, Renderman and Shake for compositing. The duo used a variety of techniques on the promo "to make a rich film, to be able to play with different styles and give it a clear graphic look for the storytelling," explains Martin.