By A SHOOT Staff Report

The thrill of the journey is captured in our two Visual Effects & Animation Chart toppers for the spring quarter. But each journey is distinctly different–one being an “accident” as we see an HD camera tumble down a steep mountain, shattering to form other technological products which in turn form others upon subsequent impacts, reflecting Sony’s DNA when it comes to HD innovation. Effects were done by The Mill, London.
    Our other sojourn sounds quite mundane–along the countryside and through suburbia in a Dodge vehicle that’s a cross between a mininvan and an automobile. Yet the journey is quite unique and breathtaking as it meshes multiple disciplines. Charlex, New York, and XYZ Studios, Melbourne, worked with production house The Ebeling Group, New York, on this mix of CG sketch character-like animation, hyper-realistic CG and live action.
    Here are some insights into the detailed jobs from artisans who worked on them.

Click here to go to SHOOT’s Spring Top 10 Visual Effects & Animation Chart

“Tumble”    Directed by Andrew Douglas of bicoastal Anonymous Content for agency 180LA, the Chart’s number one entry “Tumble” takes us to the lensing of a movie atop a massive mountain peak. Suddenly the camera being used to shoot the action–a Sony CineAlta HD movie camera–falls down the mountain but instead of smashing into assorted useless pieces, it shatters into Sony Blu-ray Disc players. Upon subsequent impacts, the products continue to shatter and reform into other innovations (Sony VAIO HD notebooks, Cyber-shot cameras, Bravia HDTV sets) as they tumble down the mountain–until we end on the Sony Organic LED XEL-1 TV, a 3mm-thin television set.
    The commercial is the centerpiece of a Sony U.S. Consumer Electronics campaign in which HD products are depicted as being part of Sony’s creative and technological DNA; thus the apt “HDNA” moniker for the 180LA-conceived branding initiative.
    For The Mill, achieving believability in this piece was a daunting proposition in and of itself–even moreso on a challenged, tight timeline. Ben Turner, VFX supervisor and lead Flame/2D artist for The Mill on the job, said the key was coordination among the studio’s teams in London and on location in Los Angeles, and with director Douglas and the agency.
    Turner was part of The Mill ensemble on location with Douglas, making sure what was captured in live action would lend itself to the elaborate effects work that had to be woven into the scenes. Meanwhile back at The Mill’s London shop, artists were in test shoot mode to explore different possibilities. “At the outset, we had to determine what the shattering effect should be,” relates Turner. “Should it be shattering into molecules before shattering into new products? Or should it shatter right into the next line of products? We had a lot of products to go through, meaning we had to move quickly from one product to another upon each impact while still having it all look as elegant as possible.
    “We found that shattering products into particles and then reforming them took too much time,” he continues. “So we streamlined the process to get from one product to another, opting more for chunks than particles. So as soon as the Blu-ray recorders break apart, we’re seeing DNA particles coming together at the same time to form [Cyber-shot] cameras. The testing and pre-vis we did at London while the Los Angeles shoot was going on made this project–spanning 2D and 3D–doable in the relatively short time frame we had.”
    Tyler Hampton, creative director at 180LA, describes the spot as “an amazing experience to shoot. HD, helicopters, mountains, massive special effects–you name it, we used it here.”
    Going into the project, Turner admits having a bit of trepidation about the shoot being in HD. “I was nervous over that but was pleasantly surprised at the test results.”
    His nervousness was rooted in concern over tracking questions when it comes to HD in postproduction. “There are so many HD cameras in the market and we had an experience on another project with distortion problems from fast panning shots using another manufacturer’s camera. There are just so many untried and tested HD cameras when it comes to post, meaning they can be hard to predict.”
    But the Sony camera had no problems whatsoever, says Turner. In other words, Sony more than lived up to it HDNA branding.

“Road Trip”
    XYZ Studios and Charlex, teamed up on this ambitious spot, Chart entry number two, for the Dodge Journey crossover vehicle, produced by The Ebeling Group for BBDO New York. The piece was directed by XYZ creative director Tim Kentley.
    A shiny red Dodge Journey emerges from a home’s garage. A group of friends then climb aboard.
    But like the garage and all the surroundings, including the countryside itself, the driver and passengers appear in black and white. And they look like character drawings but are far more expressive than what is normally associated with that medium.
    We then see them all interact with the features of the vehicle, ranging from a refrigerated storage compartment to third row seating to the kids dueling on a gaming monitor, which also screens DVDs.
    The Dodge Journey makes its way through the city, which we see both as the crossover vehicle zips along and from an overhead view. A voiceover introduces us to the Dodge Journey, an innovative new vehicle which underscores the slogan, “If you can dream it, do it.”
    From a production standpoint, a hyper-realistic CG Dodge Journey is occupied by pen-and-ink textured CG characters traveling through a dimensional illustrated pen-and-ink world. The only live-action element was the interior of the Journey crossover vehicle, which was captured via a motion control shoot.
    “The biggest challenge was taking all these distinct animation styles and melding them together creatively and technically,” observes Charlex CG supervisor Gong Myung Lee. “You have a photo-real CG car, a stylized, illustrated world–a painterly environment–and full CG characters with a sketchy look that matched the environment, not to mention the live-action interior. All this had to be meshed in a way that still made the journey believable.”
    Key in attaining that believability,” continues Lee, were the Journey passengers and driver.
    “We shot live-action actors and used them as reference so that we could bring the right movements and gestures to the sketched characters,” she relates. “Viewers have to be able to relate to the characters–that way the viewer can feel he or she is riding along in the Journey.”
    Furthermore, XYZ Studios’ creative director/director Kentley wanted the 3D characters to look exactly like the sketches.
    “That’s difficult to do in 3D even if you match the frontal appearance,” says Lee. “A drawn character looks good from all angles. You’re limited in terms of angles in 3D so we had to play with shapes and texture overlays on the 3D so that you could see more nuances like you would when looking at the sketch characters.”
    Another delicate balancing act, says Lee, “was making sure that the photo-real Journey and the CG characters were immersed in the environment a certain way for each shot so that you felt the car was treading on the stylized surface at a fast speed and actually moving through this vast landscape….This required some subtle touches. In the compositing, for example, we put reflections on the car that ‘revealed’ the countryside environment behind the camera. Again, it’s all necessary in order to make this road trip believable.”

Click here to go to SHOOT’s Spring Top 10 Visual Effects & Animation Chart

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