New York studio Nathan Love created an animated world depicting what one might find in the depths of Santa Claus’ beard for client the Oregon Lottery and agency Borders Perrin Norrander, Portland, Ore. It’s a beard full of kooky holiday characters as well as potential winnings from playing lotto.
Set to a whimsical holiday track, the commercial swoops inside Santa’s beard to reveal a snowman in his kitchen, the sink running syrup from a candy cane wall. Next up, a pine tree decorates a man with ornaments, a walrus flosses his tusks, and French hens in red high heels gossip over wine in a hair nest café. The spot closes with a cameo of local Oregon legend D.B. Cooper, who in the early ’70s infamously stole a suitcase of cash and parachuted out of a commercial Boeing 727, never to be seen again (the Oregon Lottery spot posits where he’s been hiding all along!)
Directed by Nathan Love’s Anca Risca, the all-CG spot is rich in detail, with a handcrafted feel and stop-motion-style animation. Risca and her team imagined Santa’s beard as a clay-sculpted world inhabited by characters carved from wood and environments imbued with the look of miniatures. The one continuous camera move, which was inspired by Nathan Love executive creative director Joe Burrascano’s recent trip to Disneyworld, plays out like an amusement park ride as it takes the viewer through the different “rooms” inside the beard.
To execute the concept, the team cut storyboards while character designs were being refined, starting with a timed :30 2D animatic, then moving into a more detailed 3D previs during which time they also placed all the beard hairs into the various environments and finalized camera motion. The seamless camera move was split into six different shots, which were edited together concurrent to the compositing phase. Once animation was finished, lighting, rendering and compositing continued until the final look was achieved. A core Nathan Love group of about 10 was tasked with the project, with an additional 20 extra hands coming on board during production. The project was secured for Nathan Love by production house Mothership which handles West Coast representation for the N.Y. studio.
“Megalopolis” Is One From The Heart–Of A Reflective Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola believes he can stop time.
It's not just a quality of the protagonist of Coppola's new film "Megalopolis," a visionary architect named Cesar Catilina ( Adam Driver ) who, by barking "Time, stop!" can temporarily freeze the world for a moment before restoring it with a snap of his fingers. And Coppola isn't referring to his ability to manipulate time in the editing suite. He means it literally.
"We've all had moments in our lives where we approach something you can call bliss," Coppola says. "There are times when you have to leave, have work, whatever it is. And you just say, 'Well, I don't care. I'm going to just stop time.' I remember once actually thinking I would do that."
Time is much on Coppola's mind. He's 85 now. Eleanor, his wife of 61 years, died in April. "Megalopolis," which is dedicated to her, is his first movie in 13 years. He's been pondering it for more than four decades. The film begins, fittingly, with the image of a clock.
"It's funny, you live your life going from being a young person to being an older person. You're looking in that direction," Coppola said in a recent interview at a Toronto hotel before the North American premiere of "Megalopolis." "But to understand it, you have to look in the other direction. You have to look at it from the point of view of the older looking at the younger, which you're receding from."
"I'm sort of thinking of my life in reverse," Coppola says.
You have by now probably heard a few things about "Megalopolis." Maybe you know that Coppola financed the $120 million budget himself, using his lucrative wine empire to realize a long-held vision of Roman epic set in a modern New York. You might be familiar with the film's clamorous reception from critics... Read More