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www.postmagazine.com 39 POST JUNE 2017 POSTINGS: BROADCAST DESIGN BROOKLYN, NY — Brooklyn, New York's Undefined Creative (www.und efinedcreative.com), under the direction of founder and creative director Maria Rapetskaya, has led every on-air rebrand of the syndicated Maury show since 2005, when executive producer Paul Faulhaber gave her then fledging company a shot. Over the past 12 years, the package went through many looks, from a stylish 3D abstraction to the current "liquid metal" version that's been airing since 2013. With the show now entering its 20 th season, and an 82-year-old host, the Maury team is continually looking to expand its audience to attract the next generation of viewers and maintain the momentum. Hence, a fresh, new look for the 2017 season. Calling for a clean break with all prior design directions, only allowing for the iconic lowercase "m" and the Maury deep ultramarine blue to remain, Faulhaber wanted a new design that would say, "We're still hip, we're still going strong and we'll continue to do so for many years to come." UC's objective was flat and simple, but it wanted to explore if and how it could employ 3D. It experimented with both After Effects and Cinema 4D, to achieve a look that qualified as both flat and dimensional, depending on the point in time during the animation. UC chose to push in both directions to present an incredibly wide range of designs; color decisions were locked in to blue, teal and purple. Paper was their inspiration from the start, since a single sheet encompass- es the kind of combination of flatness and dimension they hoped to convey. The two concepts selected from the initial batch of samples were quite different, yet they had the potential to be complementary — and "paper" was precisely what pulled them together. From there, it was a question of merging these two looks — one created in 3D and the other in 2D — into a cohesive package. That was accomplished with an internal style sheet for defining color, brightness/contrast limits, textures and relative scale of the texture, quality of motion and light/shadow considerations. Ultimately, the 2D elements evolved into 3D — with nearly the entire package created within Cinema 4D. The 20 th season of Maury, with its new look, will premiere in September with promos likely airing in late August. UNDEFINED CREATIVE'S MAURY 2017 REBRAND MIAMI — To promote Discovery's suspense-filled new docuseries, Cooper's Treasure, the network's creative director, Jason Turner, chose Miami's 2C Creative (www.2cmedia.com) for its innovative use of organic, live-action effects over CG. The goal was to replicate the zero-gravity environment of a classic '60s space capsule to explain the unique premise of the series in simple terms. Cooper's Treasure tells the story of a legendary astronaut and the secret treasure map he began from space. The series follows a team of modern-day treasure hunters using the map to uncover hidden fortunes. To replicate a classic space capsule, 2C looked to historical Mercury capsule footage to capture the essence of weightless life hundreds of miles above Earth. There were some creative liberties taken, such as the astro- naut's hands, which would have been confined to a space suit, but it was done to disguise where he was actually working. 2C's use of cameras was key in achieving the spot's visual metaphor — an extreme close-up on the astronaut's pencil at his treasure map before pulling back wider and wider to reveal the tiny dot on the ocean's floor as if searching for a needle in a haystack from space. An Alexa Mini and set of macro lenses allowed the team to work with a shallow depth of field and get especially close to the subject. A periscope lens brought the camera right down on the map's surface. To create the space capsule reveal required compositing and visual effects touches added in post. The Earth image as seen outside the capsule window was a high-resolution still photo to which a tiny amount of animation was added to bring it to life. Because the floating pencil was shot practically, the rigging had to be removed with hand-tracked roto-masks. Atmospheric effects in the form of frost on the window and dust particles inside the cap- sule space were added to seamlessly link all of the individual plates. Finally, all scenes were given a meticulous color grade to heighten the cinematic mood. 2C produced a :30 spot and :15 cut-down, airing now on Discovery. 2C CREATIVE DESIGNS PROMO FOR DISCOVERY DOCUSERIES COOPER'S TREASURE