Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1062194
www.postmagazine.com 8 POST DECEMBER 2018 BITS & PIECES HOLIDAY SPOT: MACY'S SPACE STATION NEW YORK CITY — Boutique VFX studio Blacksmith (blacksmith.tv) recently completed stunning visual effects for Macy's' newly-launched holiday cam- paign. The Space Station spot, which runs as a :60 and as a longer two-minute version, centers around a female astronaut, who's in space over the holiday season. Her family, back on Earth, keeps in touch through video chats, and even sent her away with a special present, that's to be opened on Christmas. The gift is a snow globe, but when the astronaut opens the package, its packing material scatters into the surroundings of her space station, giving her the impression of being inside her own snow globe. BBDO conceived the spot, which was produced by Epoch Films and director Martin De Thurah. Chayse Irvin served as director of photography. Blacksmith's visual effects team included VFX supervisor/lead compositor Daniel Morris, VFX supervisor Iwan Zwarts, VFX/CG supervisor Olivier Varteressian, executive producer Charlotte Arnold and VFX producer Bindy St. Leger. "On-set, the challenges were in making ev- erything feel zero gravity without disrupting the flow of the shoot or performance of the talent," says Morris. "We used photogrametry to make a fully-CG roof for where rigs were used to hang our talent. We built a small section for the exterior spaceship. The rest was built in CG." Morris says the team completed the work in Maya and Houdini for CG, and Flame and Nuke for compositing, and did some extensive previz to deteremine how the shots would look. The final mix was completed at Sonic Union. HOLIDAY SPOT: COCA-COLA'S CHRISTMAS RULES SAO PAULO, BRAZIL — Vetor Zero (http://vetorzero. com.br) produced a new holiday spot for Coca-Cola featuring their popular polar bears, who are now 25. Christmas Rules was conceived by agency David São Paulo and reminds viewers to hold on to their holiday traditions. "We're bringing back the Coca-Cola bears to talk about Christmas Rules, which is a follow-up campaign to our Household Rules campaign from earlier this year," explains Rafael Donato, creative VP at David SP. The spot shows the bear family having fun while preparing for the holidays — decorating the tree, stringing up lights, making supper arrangements, welcoming guests and taking a group photo. Leonardo Nichida edited the piece, which runs :45. Jamute created the wintery soundtrack. Vetor Zero used Autodesk Maya for modeling and Yeti and Maya for fur modeling. Phoenix FD was used for fluid dynamics and SideFX Houdini for 3D animation. Compositing was performed in Nuke. Blacksmith created this holiday Space Station spot for Macy's. Coca-Cola's popular polar bears were modeled in Maya and animated in Houdini.