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CÎROC Vodka: “Curling” | “Bull Jump” | “Salsa”

CÎROC: “Curling”

CÎROC: “Bull Jump”

CÎROC: “Salsa”

COMMERCIAL
ROLE: Senior Flame Artist / VFX Compositor
VENDOR: Digital Domain
CLIENT: CÎROC
PRODUCTION CO: Radical Media
DIRECTOR: Dave Meyers

To promote CÎROC vodka, this humorous trio of spots places company founder and legendary rapper Sean “Puffy” Combs in a series of improbable activities to demonstrate how “perfectly smooth” his moves are.

Of course, Puff Daddy isn’t actually an expert salsa dancer, curling champion, or matador that can leap over a charging bull. But thanks to the wonders of laborious head tracking and vintage stock footage, he can achieve all these things.

P. Diddy was originally shot on greenscreen, mimicking a variety of head poses and reactions, all choreographed for integrating with the pre-selected stock footage. As expected, none of it really worked, requiring heavy time-warping, stitching of different takes, and stabilization and re-animation to make convincing.

Surprisingly, “Salsa” and “Bull Jump” came about pretty quickly, thanks to the quicker actions. Although, Puffy’s hand wave at the end of the latter proved a bit tricky to get his head to stick.

“Curling” was the most challenging, since the movement’s so subtle, and the glide is perfectly smooth, quite literally.

Each spot also had it’s fair share of clean-up, and in some case, application of CÎROC branding, in the form of banners and courtside branding.

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7Days Croissants: “Get’s Me Started”

COMMERCIAL
ROLE: Senior Flame Artist / VFX Compositor
VENDOR: Digital Domain
CLIENT: 7Days
PRODUCTION CO: Mothership
DIRECTOR: Dael Oates

This dizzying spot for 7Days chocolate-filled croissants is all about “getting started” on the right foot – albeit a gravity defying topsy-turvy one at that.

In this case, whenever a 7Days logo appears (e.g. in an alarm clock or traffic light), this random denim-clad dude levitates horizontally in a vertigo inducing flight. He flies through his bedroom, down sidewalks, across streets, and though a supermarket, eventually landing before a stocked row of 7Days croissants.

Shot in-camera and on-location, this spot required extensive wire and rig removal, often necessitating a complete shot rebuild through Flame projections and cards.

Also, there’s quite an extensive amount of beauty work on the hero croissant, and its chocolate interior.

As a sidebar, I’m told that the final spot made numerous Digital Domain employees queasy when viewed in the screening room.

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Comcast Xfinity: “Anthem”

COMMERCIAL
ROLE: Senior Flame Artist / VFX Compositor
VENDOR: Digital Domain
AGENCY: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
DIRECTOR: David Rosenbaum

At its core, Comcast’s Xfinity launch assumes a rather simplistic concept – lines of digital information traveling everywhere, across all mediums, delivering content into your life, instantaneously.

The journey getting there was a bit more complicated and time consuming, employing proprietary software, numerous iterations, and multiple artists for more than 9 months to develop this “anthem” of visual messaging.

I joined for the last four months, keeping the conform alive, sorting through footage, cleaning up live action plates, adding stylized supers, crafting additional data effects, and helping ensure that the final messaging was on target and focused.

Also, I’ve contributed to quarterly updates for all first and second year Xfinity spots.

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Disney Theme Parks: “Jungle Cruise”

COMMERCIAL
ROLE: Senior Nuke Artist / VFX Compositor
VENDOR: Digital Domain
CLIENT: Disney Theme Parks

This humorous spot for Disney Theme Parks was among one of my first Nuke compositing jobs for Digital Domain. I’d mainly done Flame work for them.

The spot capitalizes on the animatronic animals of the popular Jungle Cruise ride. The premise is that when people aren’t looking, the animatronic animals come to life, talking amongst themselves about Disney’s latest admission deals.

I handled most of the lion’s den shots, featuring the lion, lioness, and reclining zebra, as well as the toucans, giraffes, and a wide shot of all the animals in an open meadow. Depending on the shot, animals were either entirely CG, just their heads, and on a few occasion, just the mouths and eyes.

In case you were wondering, the look was intended to be photoreal animatronic, not photoreal animal.

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Rexona: “Man Adventure”

COMMERCIAL
ROLE: Senior Flame Artist / VFX Compositor
VENDOR: A52
CLIENT: Rexona
AGENCY: Vegavega Olmos Ponce

This humorous spot for Rexona deodorant was created for a South American audience.

Primarily a rig removal spot, the premise is that a mountain biker loses his front tire while riding through a forest. To avoid crashing, he chases it, riding uni-wheel, until he can catch up and ultimately re-attach it.

Shot practically, the spot necessitated many cable removals, all to balance and support the bicyclist riding on his rear wheel through rugged terrain. One of the bigger challenges was a handful of shots, which to better suit the narrative, required the front tire’s removal from the plate.

I contributed cable and tire removals, as well as compositing the concluding chase and re-attachment of the front tire. The most complicated was a front tire removal for the concluding shot, involving the bicyclist riding towards camera, chasing his lost tire rolling in front of him.

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Nescafe: “Sunrise”

COMMERCIAL
ROLE: Senior Flame Artist / VFX Compositor
VENDOR: A52
AGENCY: TAG
CLIENT: Nescafe

Intended for Mexican television, this elegant spot for Nescafe focuses on the magical transition from night into day, all through the actions of a child.

In the moments before daybreak, a family treks to a meadow, where they encounter the dividing line between evening dark and morning light.

The child takes the initiative, reaching his grasping hand towards the sunlight, and literally pulling the morning light into the night. Everyone, consequently, gets in on the action, ultimately bringing a Nescafe coffee-drinking morning to the waking town.

For this spot, I worked on a number of the night and day meadow shots, as well as when townsfolk are chasing the line between night and day. Many of these were accomplished with complicated color corrections and multiple plates. I also contributed to meadow sky replacements and some additional clean-ups for the town.

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Acura: “Safety”

COMMERCIAL
ROLE: Senior Flame Artist / Nuke Compositor
VENDOR: Motion Theory
CLIENT: Acura
AGENCY: RP&
DIRECTOR: Kaan Atilla & Mathew Cullen

This is one of two spots for Acura. The premise centers on Acura’s superior ratings in car safety, as visually compared to numerous recognizable luxury cars, which are also perceived to be high-ranking in the safety deaprtment.

This is demonstrated through an elegant display of numerous iconic car badges and grills, cut together with voiceover. After branded images of Jaguar, BMW, and Lexus, to name a few, the spot concludes on Acura as the leader.

Sounds simple enough. But as car commercials go, everything has to look perfect, even if 90% of the spot features the competitors’ cars.

My role was to make these cars look as pristine as possible, using Nuke to eliminate unwanted rig reflections and dirt, clean up chrome artifacts, remove radiators behind the grillwork, combine multiple lighting passes, and replace the backgrounds.

I also handled conform duties in Flame.

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Purex: “Thinnest Load of Laundry”

COMMERCIAL
ROLE: Senior Nuke Artist / VFX Compositor
VENDOR: Motion Theory
CLIENT: Purex
DIRECTOR: Mark Kudsi

Promoting Purex’s new 3-in-1 laundry sheets, this spot compares the latest detergent innovation to the evolution of certain essential products throughout time. The comparison being how certain products have become thinner – cameras, television sets, and clothing, for example.

Visually, the established style aimed for a stop-motion appearance, with each of the products transforming from old to new, fatter to thinner.

The products were shot in real-time, situated on turntables with a white backing. The stop-motion appearance was added in comp, with in-betweens created to aid the fluidity of motion. Also, extensive clean-up was done to make the products throughout the ages look pristine and pleasant.

My tasks were focused on the television and clothing segments, as well as performing clean-up on the concluding washer and dryer.

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NFL: “Run”

SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL
ROLE: Senior Flame Artist / VFX Compositor
VENDOR: Motion Theory
CLIENT: NFL Networks
DIRECTOR: Mathew Cullen

NFL’s superbowl spot was designed to promote broadcast, online, and mobile coverage of the game. The commercial featured Oakland running back Darren McFadden in a continuous jog through the seasons to demonstrate that football season never ends. Add the debut of U2’s “Run” into the mix, and you’re ready for Game Day.

As one of four flame artists, my role was to clean-up, assemble, and comp elements for the training camp portion of the spot. This included tracking matte paintings, extending the football field, adding shadows, grading skies, repo-ing cheerleaders, and comping CG elements.

Considering a shorter than typical schedule, under a week, there was quite a bit of give and take to make this one work.

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McCain Chips: “The Farmer”

COMMERCIAL
ROLE: Senior Nuke Artist / VFX Compositor
VENDOR: Motion Theory
CLIENT: McCain Chips
AGENCY: Beattie McGuinness Bungay
DIRECTOR: Mathew Cullen

McCain Chips is a European brand of frozen french fries, widely known for their elaborate and innovative advertising campaigns. For example, in one instance, they promoted their chips through an entire Bollywood musical number.

For this round, director Mathew Cullen found inspiration in the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” transplanting the visual symphony of a mouse magician to that of an ordinary farmer. As conductor, the farmer parts the clouds, raises the sun, causes it to rain, and ultimately grows a full crop of potatoes and sunflowers.

My role involved assembling a number of matte painted landscapes and stormy skies around the farmer. I also comp’d rows of sprouting CG potato plants and budding sunflowers onto bluescreen plates of practical ground furrows.

A couple of specific examples involve the first ray of sunlight causing a sunflower to blossom, and the hero wide shot of the farmer admiring his fully grown crop.

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