A lovely night sky is highlighted by a blue moon. This idyllic scene is framed by a home’s window. A hand enters the scene and pulls the moon inside the house and places it on a canvas, at which point an artist goes to work.
We see the hand sketch and paint a design, using as its paint easel natural beer ingredients like hops and barley. The blue moon becomes the logo affixed to a glass full of Blue Moon Beer, standing next to a bottle. The hand cuts an orange and places a slice on the rim of the glass.
Below this picture–with deep shadows, golden light and a Rembrandt painting look–he writes a caption which simply reads, “Artfully Crafted.”
This combination of stop motion animation and CG was directed by Andrew Huang and Shaun Sewter of Moo Studios, Los Angeles, for agency Integer Group, Denver.
“The biggest challenge,” said Huang, “was integrating all of the various passes of footage that we made for each shot with the motion control camera. Becauset he Blue Moon ingredients were undergoing complex transformations from palette to canvas, we shot multiple passes of each take with the motion control rig in order to get a seamless and almost surreal, magical metamorphosis–a hand plucking the moon out of the sky as the sun rises in the distance, transforming barley into paint pigment or hop leaves into the shadow on the glass of beer…The challenge was orchestrating all of these elements to create a beautiful spot.”
The Integer Group team included creative director Dan Kiefer, associate creative director Brett Matarazzo, copywriter Brian Wilkens, director of integrated production Robert Stocking and producer Brooke Warren.
David Lyons exec produced for Moo.
Original music was composed by Andrew Feltenstein and John Nau of Beacon Street Studios, Venice, Calif. Adrea Lavezzolli produced for Beacon Street.
Netflix Series “The Leopard” Spots Classic Italian Novel, Remakes It As A Sumptuous Period Drama
"The Leopard," a new Netflix series, takes the classic Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and transforms it into a sumptuous period piece showing the struggles of the aristocracy in 19th-century Sicily, during tumultuous social upheavals as their way of life is crumbling around them.
Tom Shankland, who directs four of the eight episodes, had the courage to attempt his own version of what is one of the most popular films in Italian history. The 1963 movie "The Leopard," directed by Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
One Italian critic said that it would be the equivalent of a director in the United States taking "Gone with the Wind" and turning it into a series, but Shankland wasn't the least bit intimidated.
He said that he didn't think of anything other than his own passion for the project, which grew out of his love of the book. His father was a university professor of Italian literature in England, and as a child, he loved the book and traveling to Sicily with his family.
The book tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, a tall, handsome, wealthy aristocrat who owns palaces and land across Sicily.
His comfortable world is shaken with the invasion of Sicily in 1860 by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was to overthrow the Bourbon king in Naples and bring about the Unification of Italy.
The prince's family leads an opulent life in their magnificent palaces with servants and peasants kowtowing to their every need. They spend their time at opulent banquets and lavish balls with their fellow aristocrats.
Shankland has made the series into a visual feast with tables heaped with food, elaborate gardens and sensuous costumes.... Read More