By Christine Champagne

An artist known as “the creator” fashions intricately detailed figures of three basketball stars that come to life in “Made To Perfection” (:60), an imaginative and darkly filmic new spot for adidas created by TBWA/Chiat/Day, San Francisco and directed by Rupert Sanders of Omaha Pictures, Santa Monica, Calif., with visual effects produced by Method Studios, Venice, Calif.

    At the outset of “Made To Perfection,” we see an artist carefully crafting a life-like model of Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Garnett. Completed models of Houston Rockets guard-forward Tracy McGrady and San Antonio Spurs forward-center Tim Duncan sit in glass tubes on a shelf nearby. They are equally realistic.

Once he is finished making the model of Garnett, the artist transports all three of the small figures through a door leading out of his workshop.

We soon become aware that the models are actually life-sized and the man who created them is a gigantic figure when we see the artist reach down from the sky to pull the top off of a basketball arena.

The artist then gently places his three models on the basketball court below inside the arena, where they come to life, see a basketball drop down from above and realize their destiny to be basketball stars.

As “Made To Perfection” concludes, the spot directs viewers to www.21121.com. By visiting this Web site, viewers can see what’s next for the trio of hoop stars by way of an animated Web film titled “The Journey” created by TBWA and directed by Ian Kovalik of Mekanism, San Francisco. (For more on the film, see iWork in this week’s ScreenWork section).

According to TBWA associate creative director/copywriter Scott Duchon, the goal of “Made To Perfection” was to celebrate Garnett, McGrady and Duncan’s status as top tier athletes by putting them up on a pedestal of sorts while introducing the aforementioned Web site as well as Garnett’s second signature performance shoe, the a3 Garnett ’05.

Ultimately, the creative team–which in addition to Duchon included associate creative director/copywriter John Patroulis and associate creative director/art director Geoff Edwards–dreamed up this basketball fairytale that finds a mysterious creator giving life to the trio.

 

THE DREAM TEAM

After a review of directorial talent, TBWA entrusted Sanders with the job of bringing “Made To Perfection,” which is running both on television and in movie theaters, to life. “We knew when we lined up Rupert to shoot this, it was going to be great. We had no doubts,” Duchon remarked. “Sometimes when you go into a production, you wonder if it’s going to be all it could be. But the second we started talking to Rupert, we knew he had the vision to make this thing amazing.”

What drew Sanders to the project? “I think there were a lot of interesting things about it to be honest. Obviously, the play on scale was interesting and the physicality of bringing it to life not using CGI and any big effects but to do it all as real as possible intrigued me,” Sanders shared, adding, “and I’ve always loved sculpture and modelmaking, so that whole kind of studio world also excited me.”

To get the complex spot done, Sanders assembled a team that included artists from Stan Winston Studios, Van Nuys, Calif., who were charged with the task of creating multiple models for the spot, and the visual effects crew from the previously noted Method.

Not surprisingly, the pre-production process was lengthy as Sanders conferred with Method’s Cedric Nicolas, lead visual effects supervisor/visual effects shoot supervisor, on how to best approach the shoot.

According to Nicolas, the trickiest part of the job was figuring out how to maintain a true sense of scale. The goal was for viewers watching the spot to “never really wonder what’s going on. You always know what’s small and what’s big,” Nicolas explained.

After careful plotting, “Made To Perfection” was shot by Sanders and DP Jess Hall over the course of seven days on stage at Culver City Studios, Culver City, Calif., and on location at the Staples Center in Los Angeles and the Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh.

Conrad Roberts was cast as the creator. Duchon noted that the spot has no religious implications. Rather, this creator is more like “the basketball creator.”

“We didn’t want to make him be anything spiritual,” Sanders confirmed. “We wanted to make him quite crazy, and my inspiration for him was Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, “kind of a mad professor of reggae music.”

Sanders also revealed that Perry’s recording studio Black Arc–famed for its quirkiness–inspired the look of the creator’s studio, which is full of found yet futuristic objects.

While the creator’s studio scenes were shot on stage, Sanders and his crew ventured to Pittsburgh to shoot exteriors of the Mellon Arena, which is seen in the spot when the creator’s hand reaches down out of the sky and rips the top off of the stadium.

The Mellon Arena was chosen for various reasons, including its look and the lack of other buildings obstructing it, according to Nicolas, who also said the location worked because of the cooperative nature of both the venue’s management and the Pittsburgh Film Commission, which allowed the crew to cast fake debris off the building, operate a smoke machine and even crush cars on the street.

This footage of the exterior of the Mellon Arena was later matched by Method with footage shot on a stage setup that found the creator’s hand tearing the top off a replica of the Mellon Arena that was five-feet in diameter.

 

FULL COURT PRESS

The interiors of the basketball court were shot at the Staples Center. To achieve the effect of the creator lowering the players onto the court, Sanders attached the players to harnesses, lifted them up about 12 feet in the air and lowered them down.

To create the effect of the shadow that would have been cast by the creator’s hand had this really occurred, Sanders simply had members of the crew hold pieces of fist shaped cardboard above the players as they were lowered to the floor–later, Method composited the resulting shadows into the scenes.

Of course, it was also necessary to create the effect of the basketball arena’s now open roof, so Sanders shot fake debris falling from above as well as the glare of light coming from the hole above, which Method later composited into the scenes. Additionally, Method created some CG debris.

Method also worked its magic on the models we see at the start of the commercial, enhancing them with real elements from each of the players, Nicolas shared. In the case of Kevin Garnett, for example, Nicolas divulged: “One arm inside the glass tube is real; one arm is fake. A part of his jersey is real; a part of his jersey is fake. His chin and his neck are the model’s; his eyes are his real eyes. His nose is the model’s; his goatee is real. The top of his head is the model’s, but the ears are real.”

“That’s why the models look extremely life-like,” Nicolas explained. “They are not completely models.”

For his part, Edwards was amazed by the work that Sanders and Method did. “All of those little details and nuances are things we would take for granted, but those guys were on top of them,” Edwards praised.

    Additional credit for “Made To Perfection” goes to editor Neil Smith of the Santa Monica office of The Whitehouse, which also has offices in London, New York and Chicago; and sound designer Ren Klyce of Mit Out Sound/M.O.S., Sausalito.

MySHOOT Profiles