Axe/Lynx Apollo’s “Fireman” and Nike Football’s “Vapor Trail” finished first and second, respectively, in SHOOT’s quarterly Visual Effects & Animation Top Ten Chart, the first of the new year.
Framestore, London, was the visual effects house behind “Fireman” while Venice, Calif.-based The Mission contributed its effects acumen to “Vapor Trail.”
Tim Godsall of production company Biscuit Filmworks directed “Fireman” for BBH London promoting the United Kingdom leg of a global competition in which contestants can vie for a chance to go for a ride on the private Space Expedition Corp. Lynx spacecraft.
The spot opens with firemen responding to the scene where flames are engulfing a large building. A woman is trapped and leans out a window for help. One brave fireman sees her and bolts to her rescue, going past fellow firefighters who try to hold him back.
Inside the building he makes his way through the flames. A staircase collapses mere seconds after he successfully ascended it. Finally he makes it to the woman. Their eyes meet and a romantic attraction is apparent. But no time for that as the fireman whisks her off to safety on a makeshift zip-line.
Post-rescue, things for a moment seem to be heating up between the fireman and the lass as they gaze into each other’s eyes. But that spark is lost as her attention is diverted. The camera reveals what she sees–an astronaut in full spacesuit walking past a fire truck. She immediately runs towards the space traveler, ditching her firefighter savior.
A super appears which reads, “Nothing beats an astronaut.”
An end tag appears promoting the Lynx Space Academy, accompanied by the slogan, “Leave a Man. Come Back A Hero.” (Lynx is the U.K. equivalent of Axe deodorant and personal care products in the U.S.)
Akin to the power of fire, a tornado makes its presence felt–visually with a dash of the comedic–in the number two entry on SHOOT’s Quarterly Chart, “Vapor Trail” for Nike Football (Soccer) out of Wieden+Kennedy’s Portland, Ore. and Tokyo offices.
The web film features a soccer team and stadium of fans fighting gale-force winds and debris—both human and non-human—as Ronaldo leaves a whirlwind en route to the goal.
Directed by Mark Zibert of production house Imperial Woodpecker, “Vapor Trail” opens on a clown wig being blown through a soccer field littered with players. The wig rolls past fans, refs and photographers all struggling to stay grounded in the squall. Even an armored SWAT team becomes uprooted.
Then we see what, or rather, who is causing the disturbance: Ronaldo maneuvering with grace, power and speed inexorably toward the goal. He gives the ball a mighty kick into the net, then turns back to evaluate the now-settled clutter behind him.
The supers “Be Fast. Be Mercurial.” glide into view, along with Nike’s new soccer cleat and iconic logo.
Framestore on fire “Fireman” was shot in Barcelona with Framestore creating stunning fire effects to elevate it to a piece of film akin to director Ron Howard’s 1991 theatrical movie, Back Draft.
Led by Framestore visual effects supervisor Chris Redding and CG supervisor Dragos Stefan, the in-camera inferno was enhanced with a visual effects fireball that blasts through a door in a cloud of exploding debris. Redding created and enhanced the fireball in Flame using elements from effects rolls before embedding the effect with smoke, dust and fragments of door splinters.
“Our main challenge here was in getting the scale of the fire right,” explained Redding. “It had to be big enough to be dramatic but tempered enough to be realistic and not destroy the heroic fireman.”
Key for Redding was that the Framestore ensemble “had loads of involvement in the prep before the shoot. This allowed lots of discussion with the pyrotechnics guys and art department as to exactly what they could do for real, and what we would do in post. They were able to get real fire pretty close to the hero fireman, something that helped a great deal here was that Tim [director Godsall] had cast a real fireman in the role! So there were no stunt doubles for his part; it’s really him running through burning corridors, sliding down a zip-wire and smashing through a wooden door.
“What we couldn’t get ‘for real,'” continued Redding, “was some of the fire that’s right up close to the actors. Also, for obvious safety reasons, the fire the pyro guys use burns very cleanly, producing little smoke or anything too noxious. So the bulk of our work was to augment almost every shot by layering up extra fire/flame elements, adding combinations of black and grey smoke, adding ash particles of various sizes floating in the air and adding falling solid and burning debris. We also helped the collapsing staircase by adding flurries of embers, flames and sparks.
“In the case of the explosions, two of them we were able to shoot an element of for real during the take. There were clearly limitations in terms of the size and speed of the burst, to keep everyone’s safety. I felt it was critical to have the real lighting interaction with the surroundings that only some real fire could produce. I then built on top of this, adding larger, more perilous fire elements in order to get the level of drama Tim was after.”
Redding credited CG supervisor Stefan with helping in this regard “by creating some specific smoke elements that interacted with the fireman as he moved, and some shards of shattering door as he comes bursting out of the building. They’re subtle things, but they really add to the sense of danger and again add more drama.
“We also added fire elements to the windows of the exterior of the building, and even built a wide shot of the entire burning building, which is only visible as a reflection in the ‘visors at the end.”
Framestore’s Simon Bourne was responsible for crafting the spot’s Hollywood-style grade:
“With Fireman, we didn’t just want yellow warmth from the fire to wash over everything,” explained Redding. “We felt additional colors and contrast would create a real cinematic richness, much like Back Draft.” Once the grade had been set, Bourne did a transatlantic remote grade with Godsall in Framestore’s New York City office.
The Mission’s accomplishment Among The Mission-critical personnel on Nike’s “Vapor Trail” were visual effects creative director Rob Trent, executive producer Michael Pardee, Flame artists Miles Esmiller, Michael Vaglienty and Katrina Salicrup, and effects producer Diana Cheng.
Trent provided some backstory to the effects side of “Vapor Trail,” sharing, “Two matching sets were built. One of them was tilted on a 20-degree decline to enhance the lean-into-the-wind effect you get in gale force conditions, the other was flat. We shot the primary cluster of athletes as one pass when possible, and kept the debris to a minimum.
“Additional athletes, stuntmen and debris of all kind were shot to composite into the shots. The goal was to achieve a progression of density as the viewer gets closer to Ronaldo’s wake.”
Trent added, “We were very lucky to have a solid creative alignment between agency, client, director and ourselves.”
The Mission’s visual effects creative director noted, “We did not have motion control on this shot, so we pieced together the heavily layered comps. Some passes we felt were best shot with a rough match to the primary camera move, and others were best locked off.
“In either case, careful stabilization and re-tracking and cleanup were necessary to integrate everything.”
