Director Johannes Gamble Does it All for Bud Lime
Take a look at the videos, below, then read our Q&A to find out exactly how Gamble – working as his own VFX supervisor – and his Superstudio colleague, producer Nathan de la Rionda, executed the spots on a super-tight deadline.
Johannes Gamble: It was definitely a viral piece to create a buzz for the new flavor. DDB Chicago sent out a pitch. They wanted a “green” character – they didn’t describe him too much – to do amazing things, and they wanted each viral to end with the phrase, “It’s amazing what a little lime can do.”
That’s what I pitched from. They had a few stunts in mind, and we just took it from there. We came up with more stunts and elaborated on the character. I kind of took it super-literally. I was thinking, “I don’t know. A green character? I don’t want it to be a leprechaun …”
F&V: Or a guy in tights?
JG: I thought maybe you could go lo-fi with it – it’s just a guy in a green hoodie with green sweats who shows up at a party. That could be funny. But I thought if it were more surreal, it would be fun to look at because it’s so weird.
So eventually I thought, “Maybe it should just be a lime.” I didn’t want it to be cute at all. I just did some experiments with limes in Photoshop, and that led me to think, “What if you did this as a practical effect, instead of CG? What if you made an impossible costume that doesn’t really work?” That might also be fun to look at. How did that person get in that outfit? It’s real. It’s not CG. What happened there?
I started experimenting in the back yard. I took a yoga ball and put it on like a pair of shorts, and put a blue tank top on so I could chroma-key my top half off but save my arms and move them down to my hips. That gave me an impossible costume with lanky arms and my top half missing. It’s a real strange look.
F&V: So you had to pitch this idea to the agency?
JG: Yeah. I did a couple of stills, but I also thought you had to see it moving, and that’s where the yoga-ball footage came in handy – showing them how he moved. So I did the test in my back yard – I have a ramp, and I skated with this yoga ball on and tried to mimic what the lime suit would look like.
F&V: And you actually executed the effect?
JG: Pretty much, except I didn’t have a realistic-looking lime. The lime for the commercial was made by a special-effects shop in Hollywood. In my back yard – I just told [the client] to pretend. The ball had the right scale and the technology was real.
F&V: And you went in and removed your top half above the ball?
JG: Yeah. I got it pretty close in After Effects. It was kind of a garbage matte, but I shot it as a lock-off, then roped off my arms, moved them down, keyed my top half off, roto’d off my head, and put it together. It was pretty crude but it gave them a good idea [what the final spot could look like].
F&V: Did the agency go for it right away?
JG: It wasn’t what they were expecting. There wasn’t a lot in their pitch about what it looked like, so nobody had seen what this small green person was going to be. And I was pitching a real lime. At first I think it was a bit scary for them.
Nathan de la Rionda: Their initial reaction was kind of on the fence. They came back to us with other ideas that they had ‘ like a little person dressed in green with a cape and pants. We weren’t big on those ideas because we had fallen in love with Limey. We had also shown this character to a creature-effects shop and said, “Hey, can we pull this off practically?” They were backing us and loved Limey as well. But the agency wasn’t super-thrilled with it at first.
JG: I think Dana [Garman, executive producer] suggested they take it around the agency and test it. People responded to it pretty well, and that got them brave enough to send it to Bud Light and see what they thought of it. And we got a pretty good reaction. One of the guys there shot Diet Coke out his nose when he saw the pictures.
NdlR: There’s a picture where Johannes is posing with Limey, and Limey is giving the middle finger. It’s a hysterical picture, and they showed it to the client and the guy supposedly blew a Diet Coke out his nose when he saw it.
JG: That was a more harsh version of Limey. He has a tattoo that says “Limey” on his arm. I didn’t want him to be cute at all. I was fearful that people would think it was for kids or something.
NdlR: Like the M&M’s.
JG: No, this is beer. He’s older. He’s got hairy legs. He’s Limey.
NdlR: He’s got body odor.
JG: He’s a professional. He’s crazy! So I made it a little more PG-13. I think that was too much – that was just for pitching. But it helped sell his attitude and how harsh he is.
NdlR: We just toned him down [for the finished spots].
JG: I’m happy that they went for it. DDB Chicago was really fun to collaborate with, and the people from Bud Light were really nice. It was a fun set, too.
F&V: A key to the spots is the performance of the guy whose arms and legs it really is. That sells the atmosphere of it.
JG: The person who plays Limey is a pro skateboarder named Eric Kosten. He plays the skateboard Limey and the coasters Limey. His actions and pantomiming – the way he moves, the attitude he puts out in movement – is pretty funny. In the breakdancing one, that’s a professional breakdancer.
F&V: The attitude feels pretty consistent – the gestures after he’s done.
JG: He had a signature move that’s kind of shrugging the shoulders and then swinging his arms down in a “whatever’ motion.
F&V: It seems like it has to be hard to convey what the attitude is really going to be before you’ve actually shot it.
JG: It’s a tough place to be, because you have a short time to pitch – but you really want to knock them over with it, so you’re rolling the dice. You could make a vague pitch and hope the imagination is there. Or you could just stay up late and work really crazy on it and try to show them what it looks like. I went that route. I’m a new director, and I wanted to show them what I can do. That helps prove that the character could work – not only the technique, but the content.
F&V: Was it tough to find the right style of performance or hire the right guys to do what you needed?
JG: I had worked with Eric before, working on a TV show and in skateboard videos, and I knew he was a good actor. He was interested in VFX and the process, and he understood who Limey was – coming from the streets. [Laughs.] I didn’t have to tell him too much. He understood how to make Limey Limey, but he also understood that we’d have to do two passes sometimes to get his legs and arms, comping it together. He understood it from an acting point of view and a technology point of view.
F&V: Was it tough to make sure you had the footage you needed?
NdlR: It was tough.
JG: We had a really on-point A.D. who made it happen, kept things in check. I have a large to-do list in my pocket. Since I was doing the VFX on the back end also, and editing it, I knew what I needed and what was going to make it easy for me. “Clear the frame – we need a plate! OK, let’s get the arms! Let’s get the legs! Get the body! Let’s get some coasters for lighting!” I did all those things. The A.D. was there to make sure I got everything every time.
NdlR: Keep in mind that all three of those spots were crammed into two days. Pre-production was so quick that the suit was coming off the press and being tweaked the morning of the shoot. So we didn’t have a chance to put it on somebody and test the stunts beforehand.
JG: It was pretty organized. We knew what the stunts were, and I knew what the shots were. I would go grey if I wasn’t prepared on set. It was definitely a harsh two days, but it was fun.
NdlR: It was a blast.
JG: Every time there was a playback, everyone crowded around the little monitor to see it go down.
What exactly was he wearing on set?
JG: I don’t want to give away any secrets here. The way that I first did it, where I only wore the yoga ball around my hips in the tests, to make it easier – you end up with a weird hole missing where the torso meets the hips, so maybe it should be on the head, covering the shoulders and the head, but then you have to have a hole in it, because you have to see where you’re going if you’re skateboarding or break-dancing. We ended up doing a lime on the hips and a lime on the head and then comping the two together and plugging the holes with paint and roto. In the skate one, there’s actually a motion-control camera that does a full 360 around the yard. A friend of mine made a motion-control head at home – it’s pretty crazy. So we got a full take of the trick, and when he made the run we would clear the frame and get the plate. In that one he’s wearing the head and hips. A lot of the time in coasters there’s a head and hips as well. And then breakdancing was only hips, because he’s doing a headspin and stuff like that so he couldn’t wear the top piece.
It’s pretty crazy to wear. I wore it once and skated around with it, and it was really hard. Eric did a really great job. It makes you really disoriented and dizzy. If you’re on a skateboard, it’s like, “Where am I?” In one take it was slipping over his eyes, and he still did the slam-dunk somehow. I don’t know how he did it. He launches off a ramp and slam-dunks – he’s crazy.
F&V: Was this solely for delivery on the Web?
For the most part. And then it started to pick up some buzz. I think Bud Light was pretty excited about it. They bought the commercial block – all of the commercials for one night – on SportsCenter. They decided to play only Limey for one night. There’s a show on SportsCenter called Behind the Line, and they wanted to do Behind the Lime. As we shot these three spots we also shot an eight-minute documentary interviewing Limey’s parents and brother and girlfriend and friend and did a faux, Spinal-Tap-style documentary about Limey. The finish was a 640×480 Web-res finish, and then it became SD.
We ended up having to do a HD version for a [Budweiser corporate] presentation. Luckily we shot it in HD on the Panasonic HVX200. The guy who filmed it, Ty Evans, shoots a lot of skateboard videos, which is right in the ballpark of what we wanted. I knew all along it could go HD, so I was kind of working that way and kind of not. I was hoping it would only be for the Web because it was easier to do the effects. But when they made the call, I had to go back in. What was broad strokes had to become more detailed.
F&V: And again, you did the finished FX work in After Effects?
It was mostly in After Effects. I got some support from a company called The Roto Factory. They cut out arms and helped me move ’em, and they did a little bit of paint and patch. There’s another company called Sight Entertainment [in Santa Monica, CA], and they helped on the breakdancing spot. And then we got some great support from Ring of Fire on the very end to send it to broadcast. They helped me get it right for those guys to air. That was on the very last day.
F&V: When you had to step up for HD, what was that like?
That was a week after we shot it. I was doing short versions, like a :15 and a :20 and a :30. I got the call to make it HD like three days before it was due. It was pretty rough. But I just went for it. Sight and Ring of Fire weren’t working on it at that time – it was me and Roto Factory. We got it done on time.
F&V: How did your career evolve as a director and VFX artist simultaneously?
I always wanted to be a director. Coming out of college, I got a job at a skateboard company and started working on graphics and slowly moved my way into the editing room. While I was doing that I’d take freelance jobs on the side, and I worked at film resolution, doing sequences on films like Zoolander and Austin Powers. I started learning as much as I could just being somebody’s right hand. When I became a director, I wanted to know what I was talking about, so I could help things done in a creative way, or know how to cut corners to help the budget. And I’m interested in that stuff anyway – from being a kid and reading Fangoria magazine, I’m a big fan of weird FX in movies. I got involved because of natural interest, and also just trying to make money to help raise a family. And I still do stuff like that – I love it.
Ad Agency: DDB Chicago
Creative Director: Charles Rachford
Copywriter: Yvonne Chia
Art Director: Jamie Overkamp
VP, Executive Producer: Will St. Clair
Producer: Kevin James
Production Company: Superstudio
Director: Johannes Gamble
Director of photography: Ty Evans
Executive producer: Dana Garman
Producer: Nathan de la Rionda
Editorial, VFX and post-production: Superstudio
Editor/VFX supervisor and artist: Johannes Gamble
Sound Design (company): Superstudio
Sound Designer: Johannes Gamble
Sections: Creativity
Topics: Project/Case study
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