Grace & Wild recently provided sound stage rental, visual effects, creative editorial and audio post on two new commercials for the Michigan Lottery on behalf of SMZ.
Grace & Wild (G&W) offers production, post-production, distribution and presentation-related services through various operating divisions. In May of 2010, key personnel from multiple divisions formed a power-house team to assist SMZ with the Michigan Lottery’s “Neon Ticket” and “Money Match” commercials.
“Neon Ticket” promotes the new ‘2 Million Dollar Jackpot’ game from the Michigan Lottery. The spot features a CGI instant ticket with animated cards, slots and dice. The team utilized G&W’s B-Stage to shoot green screen footage with assistance from senior engineer Mike Burke. Props and set design were provided by Steve Young. Upon completion of production, visual effects artists Brent Feeman, Dan Olson, Frank DeMarco, Matt Campbell, and Tim Heslip collaborated to provide CGI graphics and finishing, editor Eric Carlsen completed creative editorial and multi-media artist/editor Brad Muckenthaler completed file conversions. Audio post was completed by Andrew Smetek and Evan Geller.
Shortly after completing the highly CGI-based spot “Neon Ticket”, the G&W team collaborated once again with SMZ for a second lottery commercial, titled “Money Match.” The new game of the same moniker features three different levels of play, with instant tickets in yellow, blue and black. Due to the background colors chosen for the shoot, the team needed to evaluate alternative options to shooting on green or blue screen. Shooting against white would normally be a viable option, but several of the talent were sporting gray or white hair, thus making keying in post-production extremely difficult. G&W’s Tom Fulks, who served as technical director/visual effects supervisor, recommended “Money Match” be shot against a red screen. “Shooting on redscreen is not typical,” noted Fulks. “We had to pay a lot of attention to the lighting, so I could get good separation from the background to the foreground. The challenge is that most skin tones have shades of red. Director of photography Peter McKay and I set out to light it and get as much separation as we could. I needed to make sure I would be able to get good, clean keys off the skin.”
Avalon Films served as the production company for “Money Match”, with Anthony Garth serving as director. G&W’s A-Stage was utilized for the shoot, and the red screen footage was shot using the RED Camera. Upon completion of the shoot, the RED files were converted using Scratch software, and Fulks began compositing the 2K images in G&W’s flame suite. Editor Steve Persin cut the offline version of the spot, the animated tickets were created by Brent Feeman and Max Lazzarin, and animation transitions were completed by Dan Olson. Audio post production was completed by Spencer Hall and Andrew Smetek.
About G&W
Grace & Wild, Inc. offers a wide variety of creative and technical services within the audio, video, and film industry via its operating divisions Postique, Griot Editorial, Emerge, Division X and Filmcraft Imaging. Clients include broadcast advertising agencies, business communicators, government entities, and entertainment companies. Capabilities include sound stage rental; studio and remote video production; motion picture processing and printing; film-to-video transfer; CGI/3D computer animation and effects; video editing; audio recording and mixing; creative editorial services and supervision; mass and custom duplication; 24P HD video equipment rental; and new media development, authoring, and replication. www.gracewild.com
