Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/246736
Post houses help marketers tell stories and sell products. By Christine Bunish An iconic DeLorean updated, a popular board game introduced in a new form, a smartphone that proves invaluable in a movie-style adventure, a sports legend who takes a quirky look at his record, a hero in an epic tale for the 21st century, and a truck with a classic western heritage. All take center stage in the latest crop of commercials where VFX help tell a diverse range of stories for an array of marketers. GE It was "Back to the Future" for the latest spot in GE's "Brilliant Machines" campaign about connecting big machines, big data and people to impact various industries — the latest being power. The new spot from BBDO/NY, called The Future is Now, features the time-traveling DeLorean automobile from the iconic Michael J. Fox film and a voiceover by Marty McFly himself. David Gordon Green directed the spot for Chelsea Pictures/NY. Visual effects by Framestore's New York (www.framestore.com) studio help deliver the message, which begins with one of the actual DeLoreans used in the film trilogy riding into a parking lot with the night cityscape of Manhattan in the background. A gull-wing door lifts and Marty emerges (viewers only see his sneakers) citing how technology has advanced to the point where GE has supercharged turbines that help power entire cities. As he recharges the vehicle, a CG fly-through showcases the turbines that comprise a GE power plant and illuminate cities like New York. When the flux capacitor glows, the DeLorean levitates, rotates its tires to a horizontal position and flies out of the parking lot in a flash of lightning. "The DeLorean is very precious. Only one person was allowed to drive it, and we had to cover it with protective film on the second day of the shoot because of the on-set effects like dry-ice smoke," says Framestore lead technical director, Andy Rowan-Robinson. "A lot of effects elements were shot practically for the opening sequence." The parking lot at MetLife Stadium in Rutherford, New Jersey — home of the upcoming Super Bowl — served as the exterior set. Background plates of the cityscape were shot in Long Island City, New York. The live-action footage was captured on an Arri Alexa by DP Simon Duggan. Framestore's design department was tasked with crafting the extensive turbine fly-though. "We're a relatively new department within Framestore; we opened about 18 months ago," says senior design director Marc Smith. "The challenge for the turbine sequence was the seven-day turnaround and the creative problem solving and iterations required in that time. You needed to be nimble and fast; our Cinema 4D and After Effects tools talk to each other quite naturally for a pretty seamless process." The team attempted to access specs and CAD drawings of actual turbines, but ended up modeling them from scratch, referencing factory footage of the devices, which are "the size of a bus." Elements were built and rendered in Maxon Cinema 4D, compiled in Autodesk Flame and graded in Adobe After Effects, where lens flares and opticals were added. The beautiful aerial map of the lights of New York City was created with Red Giant's Trapcode Particular 2 and Form 2. "We played with the flickering and with the light spread across the city," Smith says. "The spread of lights almost looked sinister at first — like an explosion or something. So we spent some time dressing it and making it look more positive." Red Giant's Magic Bullet Looks and some in-software curves in After Effects were the grading tools. Commercials www.postmagazine.com Post • January 2014 21