Toyota Prius’ “Harmony,” a spot in which man, machine and nature come together as one, and Swedish pension company AMF’s “Caterpillar,” which shows good things are worth waiting for, are SHOOT’s Visual Effects & Animation Chart toppers for the summer quarter.
The former commercial finds a Prius negotiating a lively landscape in which people make up the mountains, the grass, the rivers, the sum and the clouds.
This artful imagery is meant to show potential car purchasers that the third generation Prius hybrid has incorporated improvements like more space and horsepower that will make drivers happy, while also offering lower emissions, which will benefit the environment.
The spot visually articulates the core idea of a perfect harmony between the driver and nature.
Meanwhile AMF’s “Caterpillar” focuses on the sorry life of a caterpillar who is met with one source of frustration after another–even the darkly humored demise of a prospective mate–only to come out the other side not only surviving but flourishing as a beautiful butterfly.
“Harmony”
Directed by Mr. Hide of bicoastal/international The Sweet Shop for Saatchi & Saatchi LA, Torrance, Calif., Prius’ “Harmony” entailed the contributions of several effects houses with Auckland, New Zealand’s Perceptual Engineering taking a lead role, complemented by the efforts of Lizard Lounge Graphics, Wellington, N.Z., Fin Design+Effects, Sydney, Australia, and Brickyard VFX, Santa Monica, Calif.
Mr. Hide oversaw a cast made up of 200 extras costumed to look like grass people, river people, cloud people and so on. When it came to the look of the costumes, the director aimed to create an organic feel. “Since the only physical senses that a commercial can appeal to are sight and hearing, how we communicate to the other senses using the visual was really important. I wanted textures that looked like they would be pleasant to touch,” the director said, noting, “For the clouds, we used cushiony balls of cotton that felt and looked the way I had imagined clouds. Also, for the flowers I wanted bright, happy colors that looked like they would smell good.”
Movement was also a crucial element in the spot, and Mr. Hide cast a core group of 30 dancers to handle the more intricate movements as well as rock climbers and martial artists to take on the more physically demanding roles of cloud and tree people.
While the performers were placed on metal forms to create the trees and the clouds, Mr. Hide had his water people jumping on trampolines to create the effect of a rushing river.
In the end, about 90 percent of the action was caught in camera. VFX director/lead Flame artist Jon Baxter and other artisans from Auckland’s Perceptional Engineering were on set roughly compositing the elements together as the shoot went along so that Mr. Hide and his crew could see whether they were shooting everything from the right angles.
When the shoot ended, Mr. Hide worked with Perceptual Engineering to put the spot together. “This wasn’t a job I could hand off right after shooting wrapped. I was involved with the compositing of every shot,” Mr. Hide said. “To make it look crafty, we really built the whole thing out of many jigsaw pieces, so the shoot was only for providing the raw materials that we then had to put together in postproduction. It was only when we started post that we could see how all of the pieces fit together in a whole.”
Kereti Kanawa, a key support crew member on the job for Perceptual Engineering, noted that the studio’s VFX director/lead Flame artist Jon Baxter was approached by The Sweet Shop to take on the Prius campaign in that he has worked closely with Mr. Hide on a number of successful, effects-intensive TV commercials in the past. Given the scope of the Prius job, Kanawa said it “was crucial for us to be involved from the very beginning.”
Kanawa noted that Baxter took Flame, Final Cut Pro and Maya workstations, a Red camera, along with a small postproduction army, onto set. “This allowed them,” explained Kanawa, “to be compositing with final elements twenty minutes after the elements were shot, allowing the whole crew to know what was working best as they went.”
Once the shoot wrapped, it was back to Perceptual Engineering’s headquarters in Auckland where the effects ensemble “continued working around the clock for two months in order to create the three HD-res 30 TVCs,” related Kanawa. “Being a boutique company it is important to have friends to pull in as needed. Perceptual Engineering worked closely with Fin Design in Sydney which created the 3D car, and Chris Mills from Lizard Lounge Graphics in Wellington, who provided the particle-generated sprite system for the distant people in some of the shots. Once all the elements had been rendered, Jon and the team brought them together in Flame to realize Mr. Hide’s vision. This is a lot of compositing, sometimes up to 190 layers per shot were integrated in Flame. Larisa Tiffin, line producer, worked closely with Jon, liaising with the agency in L.A. every step of the way to make sure the client’s needs were being met, and to guide the team across the finish line. WIPs were sent across to L.A. every couple of days so the agency could guide the project. Once all the shots were approved, a sequence of DPXs were uploaded to Brickyard in L.A. who did a final grade, and added graphics.”
Lizard Lounge Graphics’ Mills related, “I used Maya 2009, Shake and After Effects to process the blue screen footage into assets to use in Maya utilizing a series of proprietary scripts that I wrote to fill/build the landscape with people. Nearly all of the shots where there is ‘grass’ in the mid and distant background is largely composed of elements I generated.
“Huge kudos,” continued Mills, “go to Jon Baxter and his team for doing such a great job putting all the pieces together. It was an honor to team up with Perceptual Engineering and to be a part of this process.”
“Caterpillar” Directed by Filip Engstrom of Camp David, Stockholm, for agency Forsman & Bodenfors, Stockholm, “Caterpillar” benefitted from the artistic contributions of a team of 3D artists at The Mill, Los Angeles.
The spot features a cast of fully CG photo real insects, the star being a forlorn caterpillar.
We first see our protagonist crawling along a branch, approaching an appetizing green leaf which is about to be a meal. However, just as the caterpillar is about to turn a new leaf, an ant takes it away, crawling away with it along the underside of the branch.
Next our still presumably hungry caterpillar is being deluged in a rainstorm. While some pretty ladybugs find refuge within a tree, our drab, homely looking caterpillar is at the base of that tree getting soaked.
However, hope springs eternal and it looks like our caterpillar’s fortunes have changed as he draws closer to another caterpillar in what appears to be a potentially romantic liaison.
Romance, though, is nipped in the bud as a frog extends its tongue and snatches the would be caterpillar’s mate, turning it into a tasty morsel.
Heartbroken and crestfallen, our hero caterpillar endures a cold night in the great outdoors. Yet morning brings a surprise as the dreary caterpillar has spread its wings, literally, becoming a beautiful, colorful butterfly.
A message appears on screen which reads (translated into English): “The future–a pretty good reason to save for your pension.”
An end tag carries the AMF logo.
The Mill was involved in “Caterpillar” from the very outset with its CG artist Jamie O’Hara creating concept art for the caterpillar and butterfly, for example.
“I worked with the clients to fine tune the insects which had to be the correct balance of looking both characterful and realistic,” said O’Hara. “The butterfly needed to resemble the caterpillar as the transition between the two creatures is not fully revealed–the viewer needed to be able to recognize the hero in its new form.”
John Leonti, shoot supervisor for The Mill, attended the filming of the background scenes on the Spanish island of Majorca. The footage was edited together and used by The Mill’s CG team, headed up by Robert Sethi, to block out rough animatics of the creatures. CG artist Steve Beck had three weeks to animate the seven different types of species featured in the 50-second spot.
“The benefit of working with a small team,” said Sethi, “is that we were able to work closely together with the director. Both we and Filip inputted creatively which is always fun and inspiring. Having an Avid available within the project room meant Filip could tweak the edit on a daily basis so working out the CG animation was a truly interactive and collaborative experience.”
Becky Porter led the compositing team and crafted the CG components so that they took on the qualities of macro photography by adding bloomed highlights and chromatic splits.
