Commercials 30
spot on effects
Well executed visual effects are increasingly being used to grab the attention of the viewer with a visually compelling feast for the eyes. The best looking spots showcase some of the most striking effects work. Jake Bickerton finds out how these effects were achieved
mcdonald’s weather
This Simon Ratigan-directed spot, produced by HLA for Leo Burnett, London, is built around animated weather icons created by MPC. It shows the sun icon rising over the sea, children playing with giant rain icons and lightning icons striking over fields. MPC got involved in the project pre-production with the design of the weather icons. Using graphics supplied by the agency creatives, MPC designed the 3d icons to bring to mind the traditional weather icons but they couldn’t be too close in design, as MPC’s vfx supervisor Rob Walker explains: “There’s copyright on the original weather icons so our graphics department had to create different concepts. They are all custom designs.”
“On the rain icon, the rain comes down at 45 degree angles coming out of clouds – they look different to the real weather map icons but we tried to keep them familiar looking.” The weather icons were designed in illustrator and animated in Cinema 4D. MPC’s involvement continued during the location shoot, with Walker attending the shoot to provide vfx supervision. “We went on the shoot for four days in the Lake District and managed the back plates, got lighting reference, and made sure the tracking shots would work.” “We had lots of the large snowflakes on the shoot so we shot quite a few of them for real, and this meant we could match our cg versions to these more accurately,” says Walker. The weather icons were composited into the shots using Flame, Shake and After Effects. “The raindrops required a little bit of client interaction and the snow scene bounced back quite a lot, while some of the other scenes instantly worked,” explains Walker. “We had three weeks for the entire job, which was quite comfortable.”
“Once we had a few shots in place, the client was quite relaxed, so after this we just sent mpegs at the end of each day for them to check progress. They had quite a good idea upfront of what they wanted, so they really just left us to do what we had to do.”
30
www.televisual.com I November 10
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