Post Magazine

October 2013

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vfx Reel FX's Ram work might go unnoticed by commercial viewers. 22 for Commercials outlandish" for the spot. "The commercial is all about the authenticity and hard work of the Ram truck; we didn't want to take out the core emotions of the message." Reel FX senior editor Greg Sunmark cut the spot on Avid Media Composer, telling the story of the logs' journey from the forest to the mountaintop construction site with the help of Ram commercial trucks. Reel FX's head of CG is James Rowell. tor and VFX supervisor Kevin Althans. "Some of the Ram spots are clearly VFX spots, but this one has more hidden VFX. We had to create a vista, a mountain precipice where a home was under construction, and it had to look photoreal and authentic." Reel FX's source footage was an aerial shot of a cliff on the Columbia River, near Portland, OR, with no road and no house. The aerial was shot with Klaus Cam, an aerial camera rig developed by Klaus Obermeyer of Aero Film and Scott Howell of CineMoves; Reel FX had previously teamed with Obermeyer for Ram. "The Klaus Cam system is not mounted rigidly, but dangles from the helicopter in a gyro-stabilized pod on a cable," Althans explains. "That way it can get closer to the ground and in between structures — places that would ordinarily put a helicopter in danger." Reel FX used reference footage of a construction site built on-set to generate a 3D matte painting of the cliff house with Maya and Nuke. Animators added a CG road and a CG Ram truck crafted in Maya; the final compositing was done primarily in Nuke, with Autodesk Flame on hand as well. Althans notes that Reel FX collaborated early on with the agency to determine the angle of the road and position of the house "to create a sense of the physical challenges the truck had to overcome. We did a previs of the cliff sequence and a rough composite in Inferno to get the timing and angle. Once that was locked down perfectly, we dived into Maya and Nuke to fine tune the 3D elements and 3D matte painting." He says the effort required "restraint" to keep the visuals from looking "too steep, too Post • October 2013 Nike Football The winner of the 2013 AICP Award for Visual Effects, Nike Football's :60 Vapor Trail, with VFX by The Mission (www.themissionstudio.com) in Venice, CA, shows what happens in the tornado-like wake of Real Madrid superstar Cristiano Ronaldo. Directed by Mark Zibert of Imperial Woodpecker for Wieden+Kennedy/Portland, OR, and Tokyo, the commercial has tallied over seven million views online. The agency creatives in Tokyo initially conceived the spot as a kind of museum installation or gallery display, showcasing the movement and intensity of Ronaldo, says The Mission creative director Rob Trent. The concept evolved to depict a continuous pan of the soccer pitch, with a cross-section of the edge of the field visible at the bottom of the screen. The tracking camera follows in Ronaldo's wake showing, in slow motion, what happens after he rips through — fallen players grabbing fistfuls of turf, the coach's eyeglasses dangling on his face, fans quite literally whipped into a frenzy, a player hanging — like a waving flag — onto the bench structure for dear life. Then the camera catches up with Ronaldo and his fancy footwork, the soccer star surrounded by a flurry of confetti. The commercial was shot bluescreen on two sets on a huge stage in Madrid. Two Phantom high-speed cameras recorded "upwards of 700-800fps most of the time," says Trent. The two-day shoot included just a few hours with the busy Ronaldo; a former soccer pro blocked all the game play. "All the stunt guys were pretty good soccer players," Trent reports. Some wore a type of harness for the amazing wind-blown hanging shots, but most did not. "We tried to minimize the harnesses for more free play in movement," he says. The set was built at a 20-degree angle, with the camera running parallel to the incline, acting as a cheat to enhance the vortex feel of Ronaldo's wake. "The angled set also helped with the stunts — doing cartwheels and somersaults, launching from the top of the set. The stunt men could travel laterally ten feet and way high up in the air as the set dropped off www.postmagazine.com beneath them," Trent explains. Ronaldo blasted past three other players on another set comprised of about 40 yards of astro turf. "Only having a short amount of time to work with him was the toughest part," says Trent of the shoot. "But he immediately got the blocking of the game play." Both of the Phantom cameras were used to record Ronaldo's movements; the cameras had been split up to capture the stunt performers. Elements were shot last, "so we knew what we wanted and what we needed to create or enhance," Trent says. "I kept a log of elements so we knew in that particular shot we need dust moving, confetti, breaking glass." The Mission composited the stunt men and all the associated debris churned up in Ronaldo's wake: a fan's colorful wig, plastic water bottles — including one with slo-mo water streaming out of it — a piece of barrier fencing, broken glass. "We comp'ed one or two additional stunt men in the air to enhance the weightless effect," Trent points out. Although confetti and streamers were captured in-camera, these elements were also enhanced by The Mission. "It's hard to art direct the confetti and streamers in Flame in any believable way, so at that point you go CG," he says. "There was a period of testing where the confetti was more defined in shape, but it became distracting so we went back to a more abstract shape." Some was reflective, since the practical confetti had both paper and mylar finishes. The Mission team assembled a number of stills, sourced by themselves, and others shot by the director when hiking in Venice and Marina del Rey. Then, using Adobe Photo- Imaginary Forces helped IBM explain its Watson computer to a wide-ranging audience. shop, they created the 2D cross-section of the soccer pitch's grass and earth that borders the bottom of the screen. Maya was used for animation and modeling, Silhouette for rotoscoping and Chaos Group's V-Ray for rendering. Tracking was done in Flame Premium, where all the compositing and color grading was performed by Trent, Miles Esmiller, Michael Vaglienty and Katrina Salicrup.

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