In this spot, a Lotto winner donates a sizeable portion of her jackpot to help monkeys at a sanctuary, turning a zookeeper-type into the manager of a five-star resort for primates, constituting part of a campaign from AMV BBDO, London, which shows hilariously over-the-top ways to splurge one’s Lotto winnings.
We see gorillas, chimps and/or orangutans getting full body massages, jet skiing, going ape on a golf driving range, even hot tubbing.
Directed by the Traktor collective from production house Partizan, the spot was advanced by the visual effects acumen of Framestore, London.
Framestore’s creative director, Mike McGee, provided on-set supervision to offer creative and technical solutions that complemented the directors’ vision in what was a complex VFX project completed over a short schedule. McGee then oversaw the VFX process back in Framestore’s headquarters to ensure high-end results were delivered on time.
“Monkey Sanctuary” was filmed using performers dressed in orangutan, chimpanzee and gorilla suits. Framestore’s 3D team, led by Simon French, created and animated face replacements for the chimp and orangutan by stamping animated faces over the actors’ suited faces to make for more exciting and realistic expressions. This started with modeling and texturing faces to match reference supplied by the directors and then matching the fur from the suits to create a seamless and convincing blend. Traktor wanted performances that reflected natural, anatomical monkey behavior rather than anthropomorphic expressions. So the 3D team combed natural history footage for references and matched them to the actors’ performances, mimicking how a real-life creature might behave in this scenario. The gorilla’s face was animatronic and so only required some augmentation in 2D, with the VFX team adding life to its eyes and expression to its brows. Face replacement work was blended in by finessing hairlines.
Lead animator Nigel Rafter, said: “Because we were working with monkey suited actors, we didn’t have a blank canvas. This meant we had to create realistic facial expressions that matched the actors’ performances. Once we’d established some basic subtle snout and mouth movement, the process just flew along. The next difficulty was in getting the rig to handle extremes: everything from a stretched pout with curved and puffed lips, to chewing mouths. But we managed to overcome these problems with a bit of 3D ingenuity.”
Craig Henighan Sounds Off On “Deadpool & Wolverine”
Hollywood lore has it that character actor Edmund Gwenn--while on his deathbed--quipped, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”
The second part of that darkly witty utterance remains all too true today as Craig Henighan--a Best Achievement in Sound Mixing Oscar nominee in 2019 for Roma--can attest in that he had to grapple with the sonic of being comic for this year’s box office hit, Deadpool & Wolverine (20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios).
The degree of inherent difficulty was ramped up even further because Deadpool & Wolverine had to seamlessly bring together high action-adventure exploits with moments and dialogue that tickled the funny bone. There’s a mesh of humorous banter--a staple of the franchise--along with major spectacle replete with explosions, fights, an impactful score and off-the-wall musical numbers.
Henighan explained that among the prime challenges for him from a sound perspective was having to make sure every joke landed within the construct of a superhero film. The tendency for a tentpole movie of this variety, he noted, is to gravitate towards big, loud audio spanning music, dialogue and sound effects. But the unique comedic element of Deadpool & Wolverine necessitated that re-recording mixer and supervising sound editor Henighan strike a delicate balance. “You need to get out of the way for the comedy,” he related. The jokes in a superhero film become “a real dance” as Henighan had to establish a rhythm that did justice to both the comedy and the action as the narrative moves back and forth between them--and sometimes the funny and the high energy, high decibel superhero dynamic unfold simultaneously in a scene or sequence. The “sonic fabric” has to... Read More