A Paradise Poker campaign for Uncle and Phosphorus delivering in mixed HD
standards.
2. What have you found is the best tool or innovation that has come out in the last year?
Over the past few years, the development of RealFlow fluid dynamics
software has been a great tool. I also have an affinity for gyro-
assisted GPS autopilot systems.
3. The project (film, television, commercial or music video) that most
impressed you in the last year? Why?
Loved X-Men: The Last Stand. The disintegration sequences were phenominal.
4. The best or favorite project that you worked on in the past year? And why?
The Wal-Mart spot we did last month for Bernstein Rein. We do a lot of CG
integration with live action, but for this entirely CG spot, we were able to
produce, design and direct the entire spot from start to finish and really push
our creative resources to the fore.
5. Name the top 4 artists on your iPod?
My iPod was confiscated by my 9-year old son. Before he took it, there was
Pink Floyd, Phish, Jack Johnson, Pete Yorn. Now, it's Nickelodeon's greatest
hits and Hannah Montana.
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The :30 spot, titled, “Mom”, highlights the convenience of Wal-Mart’s full-service pharmacies, providing mothers the ease of picking up their prescriptions along with other items they regularly shop for at Wal-Mart.
“The concept of the ad was to show what moms and their families would do with the extra time saved by shopping at Wal-Mart’s pharmacies,” said Kirk Kirkpatrick, senior vice president, creative director. “The normal way to do that would be to film people doing leisure time activities. We decided ‘why not make the leisure time activities and locations out of pills…'”
The spot opens on the new pharmacy logo, “The Pharmacy at Wal-Mart”, as a blue raindrop (gel cap) falls through the frame, landing on the petal of a flower. It soon becomes clear that the flowers, an itinerant bumble bee and even the raindrop are all CGI-animated pills. Tablets, gel caps and capsules in all shapes and sizes create a wonderland of scenery and activities that whisk the viewer from a flower garden to a playground, to a tennis match and finally an afternoon at the pool.
“I wanted to be tight on the opening scene to establish that everything you see are pills,” said Brian Adler, animation director on the commercial and executive producer, STEELE. “Throughout the spot, we played with various lenses on the virtual camera to selectively direct the viewer’s eye in the frame. And because the canvas was a stark white background throughout, it was very important to stage everything in depth and vary the depth of field while moving the camera through space.”
As a starting point, the agency presented boards outlining the scenes that called for flowers, a playground and a sporting event. It was up to STEELE to determine the overall design of the spot, from the pill types, sizes, colors and textures, to the transitions from one setting to the next.
“They (Bernstein-Rein creative team) really trusted us to bring our own sensibility and creative ideas to the table, making it a true collaboration,” said Jerry Steele, co-owner and supervising visual effects artist, STEELE. “We have an extremely talented 3D department, and we’re very accustomed to matching photoreal CG work into live action, but this was an opportunity to create an entirely CGI commercial.”
Adler added, “Our lead artists, Jason Shulman and Michael White, with the help of Dave Jerrard, have an innate and keen sense of color and composition. They really deserve a lot of credit in the look and design of each scene.”
STEELE’S artists started the process by animating a series of tests for the agency. The experiments provided many examples of animated pills and lighting set-ups to determine the look and feel of different translucencies and textures of pills. “We basically made a visual encyclopedia of pills for the agency before we even began animations,” said Adler.
“The way we originally imagined the spot was very simplistic, but what excited us about collaborating with STEELE was how much dimension they brought to our idea and how complex and creative their solutions were,” said Kirkpatrick. “So, the first time we started seeing tests we were blown away – we never imagined that the spot could be so dynamic and elaborate.”
Left to their devices, STEELE decided to build on the narrative from one scene to the next. The agency proposed a bumble bee as an element for the opening scene, and Adler saw an opportunity in the bee’s flight to create a visual tour guide through-out the spot. For example, the bumble bee gives way to a bird, which lyrically flies over a colorful merry-go-round and through a swing set. The bird soars up and over a slide and veers off to usher in the next scene of a tennis ball in mid volley. As a bookend to the bumble bee, a dragonfly of colorful pills circles in the last scene and reveals the Wal-Mart logo.
“All of the detailed and textured animation was designed to work with a heavily designed soundtrack,” said Adler. “For example, with the voice over, we start wide in the playground and follow the bird through the scene as it flies between the swaying swings, all the while hearing the sounds of the swing set and children playing.”
The tennis match takes place in front of a personified crowd of pills, when suddenly the ball disintegrates, and a multitude of translucent yellow pills pour into frame and begin to swirl, liquid-like, into a glass in a dramatic representation of pouring lemonade.
“The challenge was creating a liquid’s motion with rigid bodies (pills),” said Adler. “We used RealFlow to make all of the individual pills move collectively like lemonade pouring, swirling and settling like a fluid. It’s very convincing.”
Technologies used: Lightwave, Maya, Photoshop, After Effects, RealFlow and the Quantel eQ.
Sections: Creativity
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