entertainment – RobWinfield

June 29, 2019June 18, 2020

American Idol: “2012 Ford Music Challenge”

MUSIC VIDEO
ROLE: Senior Flame Artist / VFX Compositor
VENDOR: Ntropic
CLIENT: Ford
AGENCY: Team Detroit
PRODUCTION CO: Wild Plum
DIRECTOR: P.R. Brown & Ethan Lader

12 weeks. 12 music videos. Each custom-themed. Shoot on Sunday. Edit on Monday-Tuesday. Compositing and post on Tuesday-Wednesday. Finish and deliver on Wednesday night.

That’s the production schedule for “American Idol” and Ford’s fourth annual “Music Video Challenge.” To say it’s a short turnaround is a bit of an understatement.

I worked on 8 of the 12 weeks, with Lead Flame Artist MB Emigh, as well as additional Flame Aritsts Chris Moore, Chris DeCristo, and Rob Hubbard. Each week was different, depending on the theme: fairy tale, zodiac, ghosts, school, magic, giants, etc.

One week would necessitate heavy greenscreen compositing, making the Idols look like giants; the next week creating stylized treatments, transforming the Idols into astrological signs or magical fantasy figures. In short, a lot of hard work with no time, lots of creativity, and a reliance on pretty much every trick in the book.

June 25, 2019June 19, 2020

Digital Digs

BROADCAST: SHOW OPEN | ON-AIR PROMO
ROLE: Lead Flame Artist | Senior Broadcast Designer
VENDOR: G4 Media | Comcast
ART DIRECTOR: Julie Fields

In an effort to involve their audience more directly in the programming, but not succumbing to the “reality” approach, TechTV came up with the idea of giving a lucky viewer a $100,000 tech makeover for their home, and consequently filming the process from start to completion.

When TechTV was acquired by G4, the show carried over to the more youth-oriented network. As a result, the tech makeover had a few more X-Boxes and Playstation’s attached to the prize.

The design directive was to update the existing graphics to fit the G4 tech-savvy youth aesthetic. This wasn’t so much a redo as it was a revision, keeping the general structure of the graphics package, while updating the palette, fonts, and coating it all with a bit more gloss.

The walking house that begins the clip is actually taken from a promo that occurred after the initial airing of the G4 version of “Digital Digs.” I had a bit more freedom to create on this one, since it was an entirely new deal. And since I’m a fan of collage animation, and I was asked to do something with a house, I came up with a silly transformer-style arachnid mobile home.

June 25, 2019June 19, 2020

Screensavers

BROADCAST: SHOW OPEN
ROLE: Senior Flame Artist | VFX Compositor
VENDOR: G4 Media | Comcast
ART DIRECTOR: Julie Fields

Following G4’s acquisition of TechTV, the latter network’s classic tech-variety show “Screensavers” was the first to get retooled and updated.

Being less tech, and more tech-entertainment, G4’s brand of video game-centric ideas permeated the new “Screensavers,” giving them a new day-glow, romper-rhumba-room colored set, and a new list of topics to cover – comics, movies, and of course, video games.

As G4 was already abounding in enough video game imagery, the creative direction went towards comic book language instead. The idea was to keep the existing logo and narrative structure from the old show. But update it with a new pop-art comic look and So-Cal setting (vs. the old San Francisco setting).