A computer-generated car danced its way to top commercial honors at the third annual Visual Effects Society (VES) Awards last week during a black tie evening gala at the Hollywood Palladium.
“Transformer,” a U.K. ad for the Citroen C4 automobile from Euro RSCG London and featuring visual effects by The Embassy VFX in Vancouver, B.C., not only collected an impressive victory, but also halted Framestore-CFC’s bid for a third straight win in the spot division. The nominee out of Framestore-CFC, London and New York, was Johnnie Walker’s “Tree” directed by Daniel Kleinman (then of now-closed Large, now of London-based Kleinman Productions) for Bartle Bogle Hegarty, London. The Citroen ad also bested an effects-laden “Network” ad for British Telecom, out of London-based agency St. Luke’s, featuring visual effects from The Syndicate/Cafeé FX, Santa Monica, and directed by Joseph Kahn via London’s Exposure Films.
All three nominated commercials were created for distribution in the U.K., reflecting the VES Awards’ growing global presence. Another demonstration of this shift came in a tight race for the evening’s final award, which was presented for best visual effects in an effects-driven motion picture. The winner was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which edged out stiff competition from Spider-Man 2 and The Day After Tomorrow. Some insiders theorized that the Harry Potter win–which featured outstanding work from a heavyweight group of London-based visual effects houses including The Moving Picture Company, Double Negative, Cinesite and Framestore, as well as stateside expertise from San Rafael-based Industrial Light + Magic–was helped in part by the VES’ decision to move the voting process online. This enabled members to vote, for the first time, from anywhere in the world and therefore expanded the international base of voters. “This is our business going global,” commented Awards committee member Reid Paul, visual effects supervisor at Pixel Magic, Toluca Lake, Calif.
The U.K. Citroen ad, meanwhile, featured a CG car with a CG background. In the spot, the car transforms into a robot made of the car’s parts, and dances thanks to the motion capture performance of Marty Kudelka, choreographer for the likes of Justin Timberlake. Motion capture was a big story this year, with the VES Lifetime Achievement Award going to director Robert Zemeckis, whose The Polar Express was created with advanced performance-capture techniques.
“Motion capture is becoming a more mainstream way to capture human movement,” said The Embassy’s visual effects supervisor Trevor Cawood, who came on stage to accept the VES award for the Citroen commercial. He thanked The Embassy and the spot’s director, Neill Blomkamp of Toronto-based Spy Films. Backstage, he spoke with SHOOT, saying that this award was special since the voting members are all visual effects experts. “I think it was fun,” he said of the winning spot. “The dance connected with a lot of people and made them laugh.”
The winning Citroen team included Cawood, Blomkamp, animator Simon Van de Lagemaat and Embassy founder Winston Helgason. Director Blomkamp was on hand and was thrilled by the victory. “It’s awesome to have the visual effects being awarded for this commercial,” he said. “Marty [the performance capture talent] also deserves credit. This was unique because it is the only spot that I’ve done that combines performance with computer graphics.” (Blomkamp reported that he was next set to direct an almost entirely CG spot for Nike via Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore.)
Framestore-CFC won two VES awards in other categories last week. One was for outstanding performance by an animated character in a live action motion picture, on the strength of the CG Hippogriff character that it created for Harry Potter. The other was for outstanding compositing in a broadcast program, music video or commercial, for Space Odyssey-Voyage to the Planets.
Other VES winners from the commercial industry included the recipients for outstanding visual effects in a music video, for Britney Spears; “Toxic,” which went to Bert Yukich and Chris Watts of Los Angeles-based Kroma.
Lastly, visual effects pioneer Robert Abel–whose career has spanned feature film, television and commercial work–posthumously received the VES’s George Melies Award. He earned his first Emmy in the late ’60s, and went on to found Robert Abel & Associates in 1971. There, he used a WWII bombsight and a surplus analog computer to create streak photography, a technique that he used in a 1975 7-Up commercial that earned the first of his studio’s 33 Clio Awards.
On the technical front, his Abel Image Research developed a 3-D software package that has since evolved to become Alias’ Maya, a leading 3-D package used at many commercial houses.
During the presentation, VES screened a highlight reel of Abel’s work that included clips of his commercials for such clients as 7-Up, Pepsi, Whirlpool, Pac Bell, Kellogg’s and Chevrolet.