Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/571027
POSTINGS www.postmagazine.com 42 POST SEPTEMBER 2015 TOMORROWLAND PARIS/MONTREAL — Rodeo FX (www.rodeofx.com) completed 50 VFX shots for Disney's Brad Bird film, Tomorrowland, including digital matte paintings, bluescreen compositing, scene enhancements, CG effects and simulation. Partnering once again with ILM, Rodeo FX (led by Ara Khanikian) combined digital effects and miniatures shot in-house. In one scene, the film's two stars escape a farmhouse via a homemade bathtub-pod moments before the house explodes. The house, silo, pod, and its plasma trail are all CG, while the background environment is a digital matte painting. Rodeo FX built a precise repro- duction of the real house, a five-foot by four-foot maquette it loaded with a balance of explosives — gunpowder for black-grey smoke and naphthalene to create a realistic explosion. Two cameras captured the action against a greenscreen. Among other sequences, the film's star, as a boy, flies using a jet pack, for which Rodeo FX replaced and enhanced the sky, added a CG jet trail, stitched plates, and added practical debris and particles. Tools used include Photoshop, XSI, SpeedTree, Flame, Houdini and Nuke for digital matte paintings; Nuke for bluescreen compositing; Nuke and Flame for scene en- hancements; Houdini and XSI for CG effects and simulation rendered in Arnold. BUDDIES NEW YORK — Hooligan (www.hooligannyc.com) senior editor Peter Mostert recently teamed up with director Milcho Manchevski to cut "Buddies," a new commercial campaign for Skopsko, the oldest and most popular beer brand in Macedonia. Commissioned via McCann Skopje, the :90 films revolve around a series of nostalgic vignettes that capture the local color of Macedonia's capital city Skopje, and the spirit of youth behind the tagline: "Skopsko for Us." The brief from McCann Skopje was to create an advertisement that would honor Skopsko as a cultural institution while resonating with younger audienc- es. Manchevski achieved this by combining fragmented narratives with stylized documentary filmmaking, approaching the project like a short film. Editing, completed by Mostert on Adobe Premiere, was integral to establishing such an important sense of place without distracting from the focus of the larger story. Mostert seamlessly cut the overhead closing shot, captured via a drone, to connect all of the scenes to one point-of-view. FACTORY LOS ANGELES — Motion Theory (www.motiontheory.com) director Mathew Cullen was recently enlisted by marketing and technology agency DigitasLBi to direct a new spot, Factory, for Maytag Brand that includes some of the company's actual factories and employees. Shot partially on location at multiple American Maytag factories, the spot portrays the iconic Maytag Man being created on a full-scale assembly line, in- cluding six real-life Maytag factory employees. Hats, buttons, perfectly pressed uniforms, and rows of actual Maytag Men are hand built and stamped out in precision across an array of gleaming factory machines. To establish the appearance of hundreds of Maytag Man characters required a wide variety of techniques. The spot includes practical effects, motion control, CG doubles and more. Special attention was made during production to ensure that the Maytag men, both live action and digital doubles, were choreographed to perform in a complementary way. Sister company Mirada provided all of the VFX. Tools used include Arnold, Maya and Zbrush for CG and rendering; Nuke for com- positing; and Flame for finishing. FOODFIGHT NEW YORK — Undefined Creative (UC) (www.undefinedcreative.com) was recently moved by the efforts of FoodFight in expanding nutritional literacy, especially among America's youth, that through its relationship with Taproot+, it lent its motion design talents to the cause to help create a powerful aware- ness video. The challenge behind the two-minute pro bono piece was finding a way to tell a compelling story that could share a wealth of information while quickly differentiating FoodFight's approach to fighting obesity. Looking to create something that UC owner/creative director Maria Rapetskaya explains needed to not look like just another infographic, UC wrapped the script around powerful messaging, still images and animation techniques (stop-motion and traditional). They were also able to recruit HOBO Audio Company to donate sound design. The combination of food photos, magazine cutout lettering, original graphics and sound design provided a diversity that kept the piece engaging. UC completed the motion graphics/animation with Adobe After Effects, with some additional CC suite standards (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) and Premiere to build out the animatics.