CLIENT
UNKLE
RECORD LABEL
Surrender All
Charlotte Osborn, commissioner
PRODUCTIONFactory Films, London
John Hillcoat, director; Paul Fennelly, producer;
Blake Claridge, DP.
EDITORIAL
Trim, London
Tom Lindsay, editor.
POST/EFFECTSDigital Distortion, London
Dan Sollis, online/FX artist
THE WORK
Actor Ray Winstone talks about his brush with death when he was struck by lightning at the age of 17.
“I had this incredible sense of a bright light, a flash and then I woke up about half an hour later 20 feet away from where I was struck by lightning,” he says. “I was a lucky boy. And the lightning, it was what they call a splash hit, it… went down my left arm, down my left leg– if it’d come down the middle then I probably wouldn’t be talking to you today– I’d be somewhere else.”
As the song “The Answer” begins to play in the background–performed by the band UNKLE–Winstone explains how the near death experience gave him a new lease and perspective on life. He looks at his kids, rabbits, his gardening, the wonders of life with a new found awe and appreciation.
The music plays against a backdrop of birds flying, the time lapse blossoming of a flower, a horse galloping in the wild.
Winstone reflects on the Great Barrier Reef, a newborn baby, the joys of the world and being a part of it.
“It was almost like one life ended and a new life started for me. It makes you think how beautiful and how wonderful life is,” he thoughtfully observed. “That’s why every day to me is very special, when I look at my kids or I look in the garden and I see rabbits running around.”
He later relates, “When you get leaves that die in the autumn, you get these veins, like a river, like a red river. They almost look like lightning themselves, like the effect of lightning– beautiful. It’s beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.”
Leaves with veins running through them appear on screen.
“My life was forever changed. One life had ended and a new life had begun.”
Feature filmmaker John Hillcoat directed the clip via Factory Films. He helms spots via Stink, London, and Skunk in the U.S.
LEGS, Mother, eightvfx Trip The Lights At The Standard Hotel For Target, Fashion
CLIENTTarget Kaleidoscopic Fashion Spectacular
AGENCYMother, New York
Piers North, creative lead; Tom Webster, creative director; Brennan McGrath, Christine Gignac, Greg Matson, Jon Lancaric, creatives; Heidi Tannenbaum, exec producer.
PRODUCTION
LEGS, New York.
Georgie Greville, Geremy Jasper, directors.
Bionic League, Los Angeles
Martin Phillips, John McGuire, lighting designers.
ANIMATIONeight vfx, Santa Monica
Michael Figge, lead animator; Amalia Luyet-McMahan, Joe Chiao, animators; Baptiste Andrieux, executive producer; Marsi Frey, producer
MUSIC
Squeak E Clean, Los Angeles
Sam Spiegel, composer/musical director; Geoff Sherr, music producer.
CHOREOGRAPHY
Sir Ryan Heffington, choreographer
THE WORK
LEGS, eightvfx and Mother teamed on an elaborate lighting animation display for the “Target Kaleidoscopic Fashion Spectacular,” which took place the night of August 18, at The Standard Hotel in New York.
The experiential display involved transforming 155 rooms containing 66 dancers, into pixels, backed by a 30-piece orchestra.
Sponsored by Target, created via agency Mother, and directed by Georgie Greville and Geremy Jasper of LEGS, the project came to eight vfx via Martin Phillips and John McGuire of Bionic League, with whom the firm first collaborated on the creation of a light pyramid stage for Daft Punk’s 2007 “Starship” appearance at Coachella.
Since then, Bionic League has enlisted the firm for Kanye West, Eminem, Soda Stereo, Blink 182 and, now, Target. “On regular concerts, Bionic League devises the concepts, light designs and stage designs, and bring us in for video content,” said eight vfx partner/exec producer Baptiste Andrieux. “On this project, LEGS was hired by Mother as directors; Martin was brought in to make it all happen and asked us to create the map that fed the lights. Our team worked with LEGS and the choreographer, Sir Ryan Heffington, for four weeks to prepare for the big night.”
Target distributed 1,500 binoculars, and made the music available on a toll-free number, to make the experience as enriching as possible for the crowd and for those who could not be at The Standard. While the official broadcast video will be released soon, several spectator videos have been posted on YouTube.
“The show had many moving parts that needed to work in sync,” said eight vfx lead animator Michael Figge of the event. “There were many gags between choreography and lighting, and the timing was so tight that we needed my animations to be in sync with Ryan’s choreography down to the half-second.” To meet this challenge, the animation team kept their lighting and the choreography in sync by recording the dancer’s performances and then using it as a video reference. Figge also handed out a document to the creative lighting team at the commencement of the project, explaining exactly how it would be designed. In the course of the event, dancers had to change rooms frequently, some running up four flights of stairs while changing costumes and grabbing their props within 30 seconds.
yU+co, Nickelodeon Celebrate Dora the Explorer’s 10th Anniversary Via Stop Motion
CLIENT
Nickelodeon/Dora the Explorer
DESIGN/ANIMATION
yU+Co., Hollywood, Calif.
Garson Yu, creative director; Nathan Boey, stop motion director; Jeff Lipinski, stop motion assistant; Dan Smith, producer; Edwin Baker, designer; Gary Garza, Osamu Shishime, Jill Dadducci, John Roumieh, John Kim, animators/artists.
THE WORK
To help Nickelodeon celebrate Dora the Explorer’s 10th anniversary of the television series, Hollywood visual design and motion graphics studio yU+co. delivered a 45-second show open for their TV movie, Dora’s Big Birthday Adventure. For the show open, yU+co and Nickelodeon developed a creative concept using a Wizard of Oz-themed journey as Dora visits magical places from her adventures over the last 10 years. Along the way, she calls on her character friends, Isa, Benny, Boots, Tico and others, to help get her back home in time for the big celebration. For founder/creative director Garson Yu, the concept was a natural for stop motion animation, using pop-up book styled practical sets.
“When Nickelodeon came to us with the idea of a pop-up book, I immediately thought of Nathan Boey,” Yu said. “We worked together on spots for Census 2010 and I love his intuitive and meticulous sensibilities.”
Designing and directing the execution of the show open, stop motion director Boey built eight miniature tabletop pop-up sets, each about four feet deep and four feet tall.
“One of the goals was to have constant movement and surprises happening within the frame to keep the viewer engaged,” Boey explained. “To make a pop-up world that’s warm and inviting, we used simple movements that are constantly unfolding into new scenes.”
The show open begins with a pop-up card that’s an invitation to Dora’s birthday party, then transitions to other recognizable places in Dora’s world, such as the Barn, the Treehouse and Piggies Pirate Boat. “For the pop-up book approach, the most visually interesting pop-ups are the ones where we were able to use a central structure such as the boat and the barn,” Boey remarked. “They are more dynamic because of their size.”
The biggest challenge for Boey was working within the tight framework of the pre-recorded Dora song and creating each set to look identifiable yet unique within the limited time frame. Before the process began,
Boey created a full-on stop motion test to sell Nickelodeon on the overall aesthetic of the piece. After it was approved, a rough “boardomatic” was created in Final Cut Pro to show basic timings. Different characters sing different lines in the song, so yU+co. had to introduce those characters in scenes at just the right moment. Later, more detailed “boardomatics” of scenes were created in After Effects, and motion tests were done to show facial movements of characters singing. To build in flexibility, the movement was done in sections with cuts and cross dissolves.
“Once we got the timings down pat, we then built practical sets out of paper and card stock,” related Boey. “For the paper characters, we created controllable arms thatyou could move up and down. And for the backgrounds we created movable waves and clouds.”
The sets and characters (without eyes and mouths) were shot with the Canon 5D Mark II. In order to sync-up properly with the song and make it look realistic, eyes and mouths were added later in post using After Effects. 3D confetti was also created for the final scene using Maya software.
The whole process of creating the stop motion animation took six weeks from beginnnig to end–building, shooting, animating and editing the practical sets and characters.
Despite certain limitations, Boey expressed pride in how he and his team brought it all together and created it from scratch. When asked what attracts him to working in this type of animation, which is inherently meticulous and time consuming, Boey replied, “You have to have an obsessive compulsiveness and extreme patience to do stop motion animation–which I do–and I absolutely love doiong it.”
