Skateboarding champ Tony Hawk and his fellow skaters enjoy a bird’s-eye view of the new Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground videogame in a viral spot promoting the Activision game created by Arnold and directed by Martin Granger of bicoastal/international Moxie Pictures. Smoke and Mirrors, New York, was tapped to help create the spot called “Hecklers,” which can be found at www.thpgonline.com. The video features four famed skating champs as pigeons on a wire exchanging friendly quips as the action in the scenes of the game unfolds far below their perch.
From the get go, Granger did not want to do everything in CG, and Smoke & Mirrors accommodated. “We were faced with the problem of how to achieve an image of half skater, half pigeon. So we went old school. We got real pigeons in. And we thought very carefully about it in that we wanted to cast the pigeons to represent the size and nature of each of the skaters as much as possible to explore whether or not there would be comedic value in having a big pigeon for a big skater or a small pigeon for a more demure skater,” explained Sean Broughton, creative director at Smoke & Mirrors.
Rather than simply put the face of the skaters onto the pigeons, they decided to have the skaters don makeup and prosthetics from the chest up. “After shooting the skaters, we then had to reduce them down to fit the pigeon, so what we wanted to do was have them clothed in something with a texture that when it’s reduced matches the same texture of the feathers of the pigeon as well as possess the quality of how reflective the pigeons’ feathers are,” Broughton said.
The skaters and pigeons were shot using film against green screen and then transferred to HD to allow for plenty of maneuverability when it came to resizing and repositioning the images. Broughton also pointed out that they used film because it provides a better quality of green screen than shooting with video.
During the shoot, tracking markers were positioned where the human/bird mesh was going to be. This was important because when the pigeons twist and turn, it affected specific areas that needed to match on the skaters. Granger decided to shoot the skaters at the same time to allow for interaction.
“Rather than shoot each skater individually and having possibly a somewhat staid performance, having them all there and interacting meant that you had a much more vibrant performance,” Broughton pointed out. “It was hard to stop them from talking once they started,” he added with a laugh.
The costumed skaters were captured moving their heads freely while keeping their torsos as still as possible as Smoke and Mirrors supervised. The Smoke and Mirrors team used the latest version of Autodesk Flame to marry the two human/bird halves.
As far as challenges, Broughton related that the project went rather smoothly. “By preplanning everything and kind of having everything in the bag before the shoot, it meant that Martin could really concentrate on the direction and getting performances out of people,” he said. “Preproduction and previsualization are usually reserved for 3D type projects. This wasn’t one of those projects, but it was a case of sitting down and doing homework and having the costume designers talking to the makeup artists, and the makeup artists talking to the postproduction team and so on. Everyone knew what they had to achieve and that meant we could really just concentrate on performance.
“It was enjoyable working that closely with everyone throughout the process, whether it be the agency or the production company, or makeup and costume design teams. It really was a joint effort. Rather than just being button pushers, what we are known for is that early involvement actually benefiting the final film,” Broughton noted.
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