West Hollywood-based visual effects house Ring of Fire offered a preview of a soon to be released Nike ad earlier this week during “Visual Effects in Commercials,” a show and tell featuring top work not only from Ring of Fire, but also Venice, Calif.-based Motion Theory and a pair of Santa Monica houses, Method Studios and The Syndicate.
The event–designed to showcase cutting edge commercial visual effects–was hosted in Culver City by 3D scanning company Eyetronics in cooperation with the Visual Effects Society.
“Pool” is the latest in Nike’s Lebron campaign, which features basketball star Lebron James playing various roles. It was helmed by Stacy Wall of bicoastal Epoch Films for Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore.
This episode of the campaign features the Lebrons poolside. Ring of Fire previewed a portion of this spot that features a spectacular dive executed by Lebron–actually performed by a champion diver and incorporating face replacement to pull off the humorous effect.
To create the ad, Lebron was scanned using the Eyetronics on-set 3D scanning camera system, which Spivack said was a plus as they had a very short window with the athlete. “It’s really fast,” he said of the Eyetronics system. “The flexibility to bring it on set and shoot there was really great.”
Spivack reported that the complex production–lensed on location in Calabasas, Calif.–also incorporated matte paintings and greenscreen to produce a lush background.
Production also involved 3D, tracking and other effects techniques.
Additional session presenters included visual effects supervisor Ben Grossman of The Syndicate, who showed the last Energizer “Aliens” spot, during which the pink bunny helps power a spaceship. The Syndicate’s CG supervisor Luke MacDonald showcased the company’s effects-laden British Telecom “Network.”
Method Studios’ CG supervisor Laurent LeDrew, technical director Gil Baron and 3D lead artist James LeBlock showcased a unique breakdance in Pepsi’s “Dancetron.”
And Motion Theory’s senior art director Mark Kudsi and visual effects supervisor Vi Nguyen walked the audience through Electronic Arts’ “Mechanical Warriors” and HP’s “Pharrell.”
Raoul Peck Resurrects A Once-Forgotten Anti-Apartheid Photographer In “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”
When the photographer Ernest Cole died in 1990 at the age of 49 from pancreatic cancer at a Manhattan hospital, his death was little noted.
Cole, one of the most important chroniclers of apartheid-era South Africa, was by then mostly forgotten and penniless. Banned by his native country after the publication of his pioneering photography book "House of Bondage," Cole had emigrated in 1966 to the United States. But his life in exile gradually disintegrated into intermittent homelessness. A six-paragraph obituary in The New York Times ran alongside a list of death notices.
But Cole receives a vibrant and stirring resurrection in Raoul Peck's new film "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found," narrated in Cole's own words and voiced by LaKeith Stanfield. The film, which opens in theaters Friday, is laced throughout with Cole's photographs, many of them not before seen publicly.
As he did in his Oscar-nominated James Baldwin documentary "I Am Not Your Negro," the Haitian-born Peck shares screenwriting credit with his subject. "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is drawn from Cole's own writings. In words and images, Peck brings the tragic story of Cole to vivid life, reopening the lens through which Cole so perceptively saw injustice and humanity.
"Film is a political tool for me," Peck said in a recent interview over lunch in Manhattan. "My job is to go to the widest audience possible and try to give them something to help them understand where they are, what they are doing, what role they are playing. It's about my fight today. I don't care about the past."
"Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is a movie layered with meaning that goes beyond Cole's work. It asks questions not just about the societies Cole documented but of how he was treated as an artist,... Read More