The answer can sometimes be found by going back in time to one's roots. And this Liberty Group Limited spot, titled "The Answer," for Johannesburg agency FoxP2 does just that in a visual tour de force that winds its way back through the decades.
Visual effects studio Digital Domain teamed with director Adrian De Sa Garces of Velocity Films in Johannesburg and Cape Town on this reverse time-lapse piece which takes viewers from one of the most economically successful square miles in all of South Africa–the glittering jewel of commerce known as Sandton City–to show its creation as it sprung from the vision of Liberty investors in 1973. It's a remarkable evolution and transformation as we see from whence this development came and find that it was indeed built from the ground up.
The :60 is completely computer generated except for the live-action shot of the founders and their classic car at the very end of the spot. Director De Sa Garces and the Digital Domain ensemble, led by visual effects supervisor James Atkinson, set out to re-create the city blocks. As the original buildings were designed and built in a period pre-dating computer-assisted design (CAD), there were no CAD models, few blueprints, and in the ever-changing area, even Google Street View was out of date and didn't show the most current skyline.
Proving resourceful
So the Digital Domain had to be resourceful and fill in the considerable gaps to take viewers through a reasonably accurate trip through time. Digital Domain artisans took to the streets and skies of Johannesburg, surveying the five city blocks of Sandton City with photogrammetry and creating a 3D reconstructed model. From that data they were able to create CG buildings that they could then deconstruct–including dimensions, textures, workers, tools, props, piles of lumber, scaffolding and bricks, customized to each building.
Because the lighting and skies had to be continuously moving, the Digital Domain ensemble created time lapse clouds, realistic sunrises and weather changes, animating them along with the buildings. To create these effects, the team built a virtual sky and atmosphere in Terragen, an environmental simulation tool. This was augmented with time-lapse photography shot from atop the main office tower.
One of the most striking visuals in the piece is a time-lapse tree. To create that Digital Domain used SpeedTree, software that provides tools for procedurally growing trees.
The piece is a detailed, intricate story of how this patch of real estate grew from an unremarkable suburb of Johannesburg into one of the richest city blocks in all of South Africa.
Lessons From A Theater Near You; What The Box Office Taught Us In 2024
Movie ticket sales took a bit of a hit in 2024. The annual domestic box office is expected to end up at around $8.75 billion, down more than 3% from 2023, according to estimates from Comscore.
It's not as dire as it was in the pandemic years, but it's also not even close to the pre-pandemic norm when the annual box office regularly surpassed $11 billion.
This is the year the business felt the effects of the Hollywood strikes of 2023, the labor standoff that delayed productions and releases and led to a depleted calendar for exhibitors and moviegoers. And yet it's not as bad as it could have been, or at least as bad as analysts projected at the start of the year.
"This has been a really incredible comeback story for the industry," said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. "Just a couple of months ago it was a question of whether we would even hit $8 billion for the year."
Hollywood continues to learn lessons about what moviegoers really want, what works and what doesn't. Here are the biggest takeaways from 2024.
The strike fallout was real
The Hollywood strikes might have ended in 2023, putting productions back into full swing and sending stars out on the promotional circuit again — but the ripple effect of the work stoppages and contract standoffs showed their real effects on the 2024 release calendar.
The first two quarters were hit hardest, with tentpoles pushed later in the year ("Deadpool & Wolverine," for one) or even into 2025 (like "Mission: Impossible 8"). With no Marvel movie kicking off the summer moviegoing season, the box office was down a devastating 27.5% from 2023 right before "Inside Out 2" opened in June.
"It's an unpredictable business but it... Read More