COMMERCIAL ROLE: Senior Flame Artist / VFX Compositor VENDOR: The Mission AGENCY: Venables Bell & Partners PRODUCTION CO: Furlined DIRECTOR: Douglas Avery
This was the last project I did at the Mission. It’s one of two spots to commemorate the change in seasons, in this case the start of summer. The Audi’s presence literally alters the atmosphere as it drives through the landscape.
I comp’d a number of sky replacements, depending on the before/after context, handled a fair bit of car beauty, and worked on the beach transitions, primarily with the sunbathers and the umbrellas. There was also some environment clean-up and replacements, like the ocean and sand. I explored some concepts for the wave-like transition element that travels through the spot, some of which ended up in the final version.
COMMERCIAL ROLE: Senior Flame Artist / VFX Compositor VENDOR: The Mission AGENCY: 72andSunny
This Coors Banquet spot is part of a thematic series, narrated by Sam Ellliot, all based on its historical Colorado Rocky Mountain roots. Honestly, these spots, including this one in particular, looked pretty straightforward at the outset. They’re weren’t.
I worked on most of the shots in “Water.” Most of it’s clean-up and product beauty. But the scrutiny was extreme. The opening shot of the bottle needed reframing, with no clean plates to help out. So all of that flowing, splashing water had to be rebuilt. The bottle label needed to be replaced, the glass misted and speckled with droplets, etc.
Same goes for the end shot. The timing of the bottle slide needed reworking, which required background clean-up, the slide had to be steadied and smoothed, and the bar background ultimately had to be replaced. All intensive, time consuming tasks, especially considering the amount of back and forth that went into it.
COMMERCIAL ROLE: Senior Flame Artist / VFX Compositor VENDOR: The Mission AGENCY: McGarry Bowen DIRECTOR: Samuel Bayer
One of the earlier stadium/crowd replacement projects I worked on, all done in Flame with 2D elements, crowd plates, and general all-around creative thinking. These days, this type of project is a fairly standard CG task, with Massive or Golaem doing the heavy lifting. Being in smaller shop, with a handful of experienced Flame artists, the spot was regulated as a 2D comp challenge.
I worked on a couple of wide running shots, as well as those approaching camera. Since the conceit was a dream sequence, the stadium reality was slightly heightened, with atmosphere and stylized lighting. A lot of hand tracking and multiplane layers, with matte painted bleachers and scoreboards, and clever glows and lighting effects to illuminate the field.
COMMERCIAL ROLE: Senior Flame Artist / VFX Compositor VENDOR: The Mission AGENCY: 72andSunny DIRECTOR: Rian Johnson
“Last Jedi” and “Looper” director Rian Johnson crafts this clever homage to memorable motion picture moments for the debut of Samsung’s Curved TV.
I still enjoy watching this spot today. Each clip is perfectly curated to tell this somewhat magical narrative. It has that spirit of 80s blockbuster summer films, even though it pulls from old and new alike.
My one memory, while working on the many screen comps, clean-ups, and product beauty, was watching Samsung not even flinch, when George Clooney asked for a million dollars to use a clip from “Gravity,” which had a whopping 8 words (not lines) of dialogue.
Anyway, my other takeaway was that curved screens are a bitch to track and comp in 2D. I also assembled the CG endtag of the curved TV.
LONG-FORM COMMERCIAL ROLE: Lead Flame Artist / VFX Compositor VENDOR: The Mission AGENCY: 72andSunny DIRECTOR: James Mangold
I don’t recall a whole heck of a lot about this spot, except having 3-4 days to conform and finish it, so it could air in time for the Oscars. I also recall there being a snafu with the watch geometry supplied by Samsung, which created a few degrees of stress.
As per the norm for these Samsung spots, I handled screen comps, general shot clean-up, and the CG end card, which used to be twice as long and far more graceful in an earlier rendition. For some reason, it got cut down in the final. Also, there was endless discussion to the layout of all these devices and how much they should each be silhouetted.
COMMERCIAL ROLE: Senior Flame Artist / VFX Compositor VENDOR: The Mill AGENCY: 72andSunny
I clearly recall these two spots being a total pain in the ass. Both were focused on Samsung’s Galaxy family of mobile devices, the former “LeBron Dunk” on the Note 3, and the latter “Pencil” on the Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1. And both were poking fun at their main competitor Apple, and their mobile equivalents.
That brings me to “LeBron Dunk.” This was challenging for two reasons. The footage couldn’t be digitally altered in any way, since this was a comparison between the two screen displays. That proved difficult, when addressing content revisions, because both screens had to be reshot side-by-side, on their respective devices, under the same lighting conditions, to uphold the validity of the comparison. And there were a lot of revisions.
I worked on all the wide side-by-sides, as well as the endcard, which featured the only CG element. I also contributed concept work to deciphering the look of the background environment, which admittedly doesn’t look like much. But it took a lot of back and forth to arrive at the given dark nebulous space that appears in the spot.
“Pencil” had similar background challenges. Again, this spot was shot all in-camera. But finding the correct lighting and depth cues to reveal each device had to be refined in post. And the right shade of darkness on the background surface helped determine that.
I contributed the opening reveal, the side-by-side screen comparison, which also had the same complexities as “LeBron Dunk,” and the endcard, which again featured the only CG element.
COMMERCIAL ROLE: Lead Flame Artist / VFX Compositor VENDOR: The Mission AGENCY: 72andSunny
If memory serves, this was one of the easier Samsung spots to work on. It was still a minute long. And the schedule was under a week. But the workload was fairly straightforward. In other words, this was primarily a conform and clean-up job, with a lot screen comps, and a fancy CG endcard. Plus, there was a team of 6 Flame Artists.
I did a handful of screen comps, removed some logos from a snowboard for the downhill rooftop sequence, changed the time of day for the bathtub bobsled ride, and spent the remainder of the schedule crafting the triple product endcard.
SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL ROLE: Senior Flame Artist / VFX Compositor VENDOR: The Mission CLIENT: Squarespace PRODUCTION CO: Anonymous Content DIRECTOR: Malcolm Venville
It’s interesting to look back at this one. At the time, all the visualized memes and internet conceits were all current. Now, they look so dated. But the underlying concept still plays to surprising effect – albeit, just a few years out of date. I could totally see this being revamped for today’s online culture.
That said, I worked on a number of vignettes for this spot, most notably the memes for virus, stock photo, stock broker, funny words, and sexy singles. Much of what you see was shot in camera. But numerous alterations had to be made, including logo and signage replacement, environment extensions, floating UI graphics, and style-based treatments.
COMMERCIAL ROLE: Senior Flame Artist / VFX Compositor VENDOR: The Mission AGENCY: 72andSunny
A humorous take on the holidays, Santa is in full Steve Jobs mode for this press conference parody product reveal of the new Samsung smart watch / mobile device.
The bulk of the work centered on the screen comps, the primary one being the motion picture-sized one behind St. Nick and his elf helper. There was a team of six, so those were split evenly. The main challenge was generating the content itself, which was created in After Effects and Flame, depending on complexity and timing.
Flame also contributed some subtle particle systems to emulate snow falling from the top of the stage.
And I handled the CG endcard, featuring four phones, a stylus, and a watch. When these endcards feature more than one product, the number of iterations can get out of hand. This one was no different.
COMMERCIAL ROLE: Senior Flame Artist / VFX Compositor VENDOR: The Mission AGENCY: 72andSunny
Fairly straightforward yet elegant tabletop product spot for Samsung’s latest (at the time) Note 3 mobile device. This one involved the typical product beauty and rig removal for the phone.
Also, since the Note 3 was still in production at the time of our production, some of the screen content and functionality had to be built through 2D graphics and animation, and thus tracked back into the given shots. Some of that was handled in After Effects, some in Flame. I worked on the stylus functionality shots, as well as the watch.
Lastly, I built the endcard out of multiple plates to ensure proper timing and smoothness of product spin.
