Thierry Poiraud via Paranoid Paris (he is also repped by Independent Films, London), directed this spot for Réseau Ferré de France (RFF), the company responsible for managing the French national railway network. Charged with promoting RFF and its ongoing modernization of the rail network, the commercial will air on terrestrial and cable/satellite channels and is already proving to be a hit online.
Although the film was shot traditionally using ARRI Alexa cameras, Poiraud employed a variety of techniques including model making and 3D animation to create a world that marries real life and the magic of miniature railway. With an up tempo score by Metronomy, this 45-second spot takes the viewer on a whimsical and exciting journey across France that captures the full scale of RFF’s day to day operations.
We see the role the RFF plays in people’s everyday lives, transporting them as well as products along the railway network–with the occasional intervention of a giant human hand that modernizes the railway infrastructure as it continues going about its daily business.
A voiceover relates the slogan, “Building tomorrow’s network while running today’s.” An end tag carrying the RFF logo also contains the message, “Tomorrow on track today.”
Poiraud observed that working on the RFF film “reminded me of shooting my first animated films when I was a kid. We shot all over France for a month at locations I’d heard of but never visited using only a small crew. After the shoot, we recreated most of the locations as small-scale models, which my son is now playing with at home and I had the chance to put Sergio Leon’s comment that Cinemascope was invented to shoot trains into practice.”
Vatican, Microsoft Create AI-Generated St. Peter’s Basilica–For In-Person and Virtual Visitors
The Vatican and Microsoft on Monday unveiled a digital twin of St. Peter's Basilica that uses artificial intelligence to explore one of the world's most important monument's while helping the Holy See manage visitor flows and identify conservation problems. Using 400,000 high-resolution digital photographs, taken with drones, cameras and lasers over four weeks when no one was in the basilica, the digital replica is going online alongside two new on-site exhibits to provide visitors -- real and virtual -- with an interactive experience. "It is literally one of the most technologically advanced and sophisticated projects of its kind that has ever been pursued," Microsoft's president Brad Smith told a Vatican press conference. The project has been launched ahead of the Vatican's 2025 Jubilee, a holy year in which more than 30 million pilgrims are expected to pass through the basilica's Holy Door, on top of the 50,000 who visit on a normal day. "Everyone, really everyone should feel welcome in this great house," Pope Francis told Smith and members of the project's development teams at an audience Monday. The digital platform allows visitors to reserve entry times to the basilica, a novelty for one of the world's most visited monuments that regularly has an hours-long line of tourists waiting to get in. But the heart of the project is the creation of a digital twin of St. Peter's Basilica through advanced photogrammetry and artificial intelligence that allows anyone to "visit" the church and learn about its history. The ultra-precise 3D replica, developed in collaboration with digital preservation company Iconem, incorporates 22 petabytes of data — enough to fill five million DVDs — Smith said. The images have already identified structural... Read More