Director Chris Palmer of Gorgeous Enterprises teamed with Passion Pictures, Framestore and BBH on a yearlong collaboration which yielded this visually ambitious spot (:90, :60 and :40 versions)
promoting Barclaycard’s contactless payment service.
The piece begins with a confused dad, daunted by the prospect of choosing a toy for his son from a busy toy shop. That is until he meets a talking monkey called Mr B, who leads him through a world of living, highly competitive toys. From ‘little hairy bears’ to flirtatious dolls, he is guided through a postproduction landscape of shot multi-layered elements, including green screen live action, wind-up toys, puppeteered dolls, bears, pandas, remote-control cars, helicopters, transformers, and much much more.
Framestore’s Flame team led by Jonathan Hairman, composited layer upon layer of elements, carefully composing each shot. Once this was achieved, Framestore then set about the task of making Mr B talk. Using a second puppeteered head and a crafted script, Mr B’s new head was tracked, re-lit and fine-tuned into each shot to bring him to life.
Every viewing of the film will reveal another level of the huge detail all parties went to, each eye and mouth movement (even on out of focus characters in the background) has all been animated, and timed to frame accuracy. The project was a huge undertaking and involved a vast team of compositors, trackers and producers.
“Beatles ’64” Documentary Captures Intimate Moments From Landmark U.S. Visit
Likely most people have seen iconic footage of the Beatles performing on "The Ed Sullivan Show." But how many have seen Paul McCartney during that same U.S. trip feeding seagulls off his hotel balcony?
That moment — as well as George Harrison and John Lennon goofing around by exchanging their jackets — are part of the Disney+ documentary "Beatles '64," an intimate look at the English band's first trip to America that uses rare and newly restored footage. It streams Friday.
"It's so fun to be the fly on the wall in those really intimate moments," says Margaret Bodde, who produced alongside Martin Scorsese. "It's just this incredible gift of time and technology to be able to see it now with the decades of time stripped away so that you really feel like you're there."
"Beatles '64" leans into footage of the 14-day trip filmed by documentarians Albert and David Maysles, who left behind 11 hours of the Fab Four goofing around in New York's Plaza hotel or traveling. It was restored by Park Road Post in New Zealand.
"It's beautiful, although it's black and white and it's not widescreen," says director David Tedeschi. "It's like it was shot yesterday and it captures the youth of the four Beatles and the fans."
The footage is augmented by interviews with the two surviving members of the band and people whose lives were impacted, including some of the women who as teens stood outside their hotel hoping to catch a glimpse of the Beatles.
"It was like a crazy love," fan Vickie Brenna-Costa recalls in the documentary. "I can't really understand it now. But then, it was natural."
The film shows the four heartthrobs flirting and dancing at the Peppermint Lounge disco, Harrison noodling with a Woody Guthrie riff on his guitar... Read More