Mercedes - Escape the map! A lot to be thankful for! Like working on this cool commercial/film.
A 4 minute film/contest to win a new Mercedes. Digital Domain teamed up with director Carl Rinsch, RSA and AMV BBDO for “Escape the Map,” a surreal POV journey into a world inspired by Google Street View. With characters ravaged by digital artifacts, blurred visages and time echoes, this piece incorporated a ton of 3D Nuke Compositing and breaking all the rules!
Digital Domain Visual Effects Supervisor Jay Barton, who is currently working with Rinsch on his upcoming feature for Universal Pictures, “47 Ronin,” led the team. His idea was to use photogrammetry — a technique in which measurements are taken from photographs to create real-world objects — to create the world. All of the live action was shot in Hong Kong, with Barton scouting and shooting iconic locations which were later used in the world-building. Additional green-screen shoots were staged in Hong Kong and Los Angeles.
“We first had to develop the visual language of the world,” Barton said. “We took inspiration from Google Street view and replicated that, but in moving video. As photos are stitched together, they sometimes seam strangely. They might not line up, or two buildings might occupy the same space, or people get cut in half. We played a lot with how images would load or resolve, or react when a whole new set of photos came in to reset the world. Here, when you explore you have more options and more viewpoints. You can decide where to look, walk, or drive and your perspective and resolution update accordingly.”
CLIENT: Mercedes Benz PRODUCT: C63 AMG TITLE: “The Escape”
ADVERTISING AGENCY: Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO Ltd UK Creative Team: Paul Knott & Tim Vance Creative Director: Tim Riley Agency Producer: Emmalou Johnson Board Account Director: Ben King Account Director: Rob Tauscher Account Manager: Nick Andrew
PRODUCTION COMPANY: RSA Films, Ltd. UK Director: Carl Erik Rinsch Producer: Margo Mars
FACILITY COMPANY HONG KONG: RSA Asia Hong Kong Facility Producer: Marco Leung
FACILITY COMPANY Los Angeles: RSA LA LA Facility Producer: Christy Lindgren DOP: Eric Steelberg
FACILITY COMPANY Los Angeles: RSA LA LA Facility Producer: Christy Lindgren DOP: Eric Steelberg
VISUAL EFFECTS: Digital Domain, Inc. 300 Rose Avenue, Venice CA 90291 Chief Creative Officer, EP: Ed Ulbrich Executive Producer: Tanya Cohen Head of Production: Scott Gemmell Visual Effects Supervisor: Jay Barton CG Supervisor: Ronald D. Herbst VFX Producer: Chris Fieldhouse VFX Coordinator: David Ziek Avid Edit: Todd Miller Avid Edit: Brian Miller Avid Edit: David Hsin Digital Standards Consultant: Jeff Heusser Previs: Roy Sato Flame Artist: Paul Kirsch PHOTOGRAMMETRY: Scott Edelestein PHOTOGRAMMETRY: Gil Hacco GENERALIST: Daisuke Nagae GENERALIST: Brian Creasey GENERALIST: Casey Benn GENERALIST: Rick Thomas MAYA/HD FX: Adrian Graham Maya FX: Lee Carlton MATTE PAINT: Zach Christian MATTE PAINT: Ting Lo TRACK: Michael Lori TRACK: Montu Jariwarla TRACK: Roxanne Zuckerman Roto Artist: Edgar Diaz Roto Artist: Nathalie Gonthier Rigging: Derek Crosby Compositor Supervisor: Rafael Colon Nuke Compositor: Chia-chi Hu Nuke Compositor: Sven Dreesbach Nuke Compositor: Aruna Inversin Nuke Compositor: Scott Hale Motion Graphics Artist: Cody Williams Digital Studio Engineer: David Bryan Digital Studio Engineer: Fernando Pantoja
OFFLINE EDIT: Stitch Editing Editor: Frank Effron
DIGITAL PRODUCTION COMPANY: Unit9 Interactive Director: Rob Corradi
SOUND DESIGN: Factory Studios Sound Engineers: Tom Joyce and Anthony Moore
I had the honor of compositing visual effects for the digital remastering of Star Trek The Next Generation at CBS Digital. For the upcoming release, we did the pilot episode and several others. Eventually CBS will release all the episodes on Blu-Ray.
Thank you to CBSD for including me on such a historic venture. It was a great project with a top notch team!
I just found out that the commercial, “Mini Countryman Flow” that I did Compositing on at Sway Studios won a Silver Lion at 'The Cannes International Festival of Creativity' for Film Craft.
Digital Domain delivers infinity in the mirror room sequence and headquarters destruction scene. The collaboration was a once in a lifetime opportunity to work on a truly great movie. I grew up with the X-Men, reading the comics, learning to draw the characters and watching them come to life with amazement in cartoons and movies my whole life. I have also wanted to work at DD since I was at SCAD. Here's a movie review and links of interest.
Kevin Bacon, Shaw, destroys an atrium, an environment augmented by DD with fully CG explosions, debris and fire. “Our atrium explosions were led by effects animation supervisor Brian Gazdik,” says Kalaitzidis. “We used Houdini to break things and add fire on top of that. It included desks, and ceilings and windows and even typewriters on the desks. In the past we’d use real pyro elements but I felt like this was one of the shows where we didn’t need to do that for CG fire. And not only did we have CG fire but all the characters shooting at Shaw from the top of the atrium were all CG and mo-capped.” http://www.fxguide.com/featured/making-mutants-for-x-men-first-class/
After attempting to draw the nuclear power of the submarine, Shaw is confronted by Lensherr in a ‘mirror room’, an environment shot completely against greenscreen. Once filmed, DD assembled some rough post-viz to help establish the key beats and rudimentary, but multiple, reflections. “That was approved by John Dykstra and then we came up with a look-dev for the mirror room,” says Kalaitzidis. “We used reference from Enter the Dragon with Bruce Lee, in the mirror maze. That showed the imperfections and the hues and mutual density that we needed to add in.”
Witness-cam footage of Shaw and Lensherr, again, was used to copy their performances via roto-mation. “Using this animation,” explains Kalaitzidis, “we reflected CG doubles into the mirrors themselves. They’re fighting each other and there’s breaking glass which was done with Maya and Houdini, and then composited in Nuke.”
2011 Sundance Film Festival, Official Selection: "Pandemic"
Lance Weiler, Co-Director of "The Last Broadcast" and Director of "Head Trauma" has his latest short film in this years Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. I was asked to create visual effects for the film and worked on around 30 shots for "Pandemic"
An article on Wired.com goes into more detail here.
