August 27, 2009

Making of Apex Brazil Spot

Click to view Commercial

Behind the Scenes Graphics – APEX “My Brazil” Commercial
We recently created a 30-second commercial for APEX Brazil, starring IRL driver Tony Kanaan, which was coordinated through our graphics department. The IMSP graphics team of animators and compositors had the challenge of placing a green-screened actor into a “virtual” world that needed to be created from scratch...with a timeline of one week. We will try to go through and explain our process in creating this visual intensive spot from start to finish from a graphics POV.

Concept / Pre-Production
The concept for the commercial was TK standing in front of a wall of monitors with the ability to interact with them to highlight specific videos inside the monitors. TK would be green-screened and the environment would have to be digitally created. We compiled as many reference images as we could find to help us communicate and confirm the concept. We also had to determine the correct scale for TK compared to the screens. Once all the details were figured out we had to bring everything to life.

Monitor Wall
Our first challenge was to create a wall of monitors and the environment they would live in. We knew we wanted everything to be in 3D space so we could move a camera around the entire scene and have the ability to easily match the green screen camera angles. The monitor wall was made in our compositing software (After Effects) with great control in mind because we needed to have the ability to swap out video on the fly per change requests, both internally and from the client.

Green Screen
Our green screen process was straightforward and traditional. We shot TK in front of evenly lit green material and then keyed the green out of the video. This keying process takes place in our compositing software using a specific keying plug-in. Once we had TK keyed out, we could then place him in front of our monitor wall and composite the final look with glows, reflections, and other effects.

Touch Transition
The next challenge was figuring out the look and feel of the transition between TK touching the monitor wall and the video exploding to full screen. We needed to give the transition animation as much energy and excitement as possible because the full screen videos were the substance of the spot. First, we had to give the monitor some feedback from the touch, so when he finally touches the monitor there is a brief build of effects and a sense of energy pulsing through the monitor. After he touches the screen the video breaks apart into pixels/particles and explodes “through” TK. The pixels/particles then reform into the video, while leftover particles form a specific word. Creating this transition was tricky because we were animating in 3D space then transitioning into a 2D space so custom controls were created to easily manipulate this transition.

End Wave
The final transition into the sponsor logo was created using both fluid simulation software (RealFlow) and compositing techniques. We simulated a wave splashing through an “e” shape and then rendered that simulation in 3D. To complete the look we paired the rendered simulation with 2D particles and other effects to create an energy-filled splash that reveals the sponsor logo.