Computer Graphics World

May 2009 36 n n n n Broadcast the trees, buildings, sidewalk, street …every- thing is covered in a layer of fluffy snow, and flakes continue falling. A gray haze blankets the environment, adding an extra chill to the scene. at is, until the man jaunts by. He is surrounded by a sphere of bright, warm, summer hues; as he passes through a scene, it suddenly transitions from a drab winter scenario to a vibrant summer one, then back again as he moves along. e setting within the sphere shouts "summer;" the scene out- side the sphere, "winter." For instance, as the Bud Light Lime guy approaches a bundled-up man in a heavy coat, hat, boots, and gloves brushing snow off a pale-yellow car, the vehicle suddenly turns into a bright yellow convertible, and the man is now dressed in sneakers and khakis. e transformation is seamless, as is the transition back to the winter scene. In other shots, colorful flowers spring forth from a dormant planter, a lawnmower re- places a snowblower, and a woman cooking at a grill turns into a snowman. When the guy reaches his destination—a party—it, too, is awash in the colors of summer. Pulling off such smooth transitions from the winter plates to the summer plates re- quired a number of complex, multilayered composites. It also called for detail in the scenes, some of which were practical and some CG. Most important, though, was the lighting, which had to remain consistent to make it seem as if there were just one scene in the frame at all times, rather than two. "[Director] Oskar Holmedal from Stylewar and I talked over the phone a bit to figure out how this effect of mixing summer and winter would look, how win- ter would turn to summer around a per- son. We agreed, based on our initial con- versations, that we didn't want to have two different types of lighting. We wanted the light direction to be the same, otherwise it would look too much like a composite of two different worlds," explains Robert Sethi, who, along with Sam Kao, served as lead 3D artist on the project. Making the Change As Sethi points out, the project demanded a quick turnaround. e job was awarded on a Monday, and a week later the two-day shoot was done on a Warner Bros. lot. In between that time, Stylewar storyboarded the entire spot. e commercial contains 19 shots, all of which have an effect applied to them. For the shoot, there was just a single stage, so it had to be dressed twice. "We did the best we could with the time con- straints, and added the rest of the complex- ity in post to make the shots look more refined," Sethi says. "In the end, every shot has a lot of detail that you don't really see until you watch it a number of times or see a 'before and after.' " ere are a num- ber of obvious objects that are practical, but many are CG, including the flowers, trees, and falling/melting snow. e artists created these using Autodesk's Maya and rendered them with Pixar's RenderMan. Later, they composited the objects using Autodesk's Flame, and tracked the scenes using 2d3's Boujou. On location, DP Crille Forsberg from Smuggler used a duplicating head on the camera so that he could film the two plates—one summer, one winter—using identical camera paths for each. e sum- mer plate was shot first, since the Bud Light Lime guy's performance would establish the spot's timing. A spotlight tracked him through the scenes. When the take was sat- isfactory, the information was stored in the repeat head. en, the set was quickly re- dressed for winter and the scene reshot. "If there weren't any actors in the scenes, we would have been able to do [the winter scene] in one take. Because there were peo- ple moving around, we had to make sure the plate corresponded with the summer plate we had already shot," explains Sethi. "Even if the camera is repeating the same move, it doesn't mean the people are. ere are new things happening in the scenes, as well." An overlay enabled the group to see both plates simultaneously on set. Digital Touches In addition to the obvious seasonal clues, the Brickyard artists added a haze layer in addition to one with falling snow, to give the scene a cold, drab feel. Other 2D en- hancements washed the buildings and oth- er objects in a layer of frost. "We used CG for all the stuff we couldn't do when we shot [the action] on a sunny, warm day in LA," adds Sethi. e goal: to contrast the seasons and to illustrate the differences be- tween lively (summer) and dull (winter). "Winter is not necessarily dull, but we graded down the plate to be grayer and brought down the saturations so this [con- cept] would read easier," says Sethi. "We also took summer up a notch and exag- The key to the commercial's success was maintaining consistent lighting between the summer and winter plates, to make the scene look like it was from a single world.

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