19 A 52
STUDIO PHILOSOPHY
Established in 1997 as a home for the very latest high-end photo-real visual effects technologies and the industry’s most innovative and talented graphic design artists, visual effects company a52 creates award-winning imagery for the world’s most visually ambitious commercial and television projects. Having relocated to Santa Monica in 2007, the company’s work has earned AICP Show recognition for 11 consecutive years along with recent “Outstanding Commercial” Emmy, Andy, BDA, Belding, Clio, British Design and Art Direc?tion, International Monitor, International Automotive Advertising, London International Advertising, One Show, and PROMAX awards.
ACURA: “MOTION”
Creative and Production Process For Acura “Motion,” a52’s effects team, under the guidance of VFX supervisor and lead artist Patrick Murphy, worked with the creatives from RPA and Director Lance Acord to formulate a unique project work-flow. Acord wanted to let the grace of motion of the human body draw the viewer in, with the con-trasting reality of a true impact—presented in the end copy—providing the drama to the spot, along with the image of each person being “jerked out” of his or her daily routine.
The result is powerful scenes showing indi-viduals in everyday situations suddenly experi-encing the type of violent inertia that occurs inside a vehicle during a collision. To capture live action footage of the actors (each of whom was a trained stunt performer) violently thrown into odd directions, Acord and his colleagues from Park Pictures, along with Murphy and a52 producer Pete King, captured high-speed footage of the actors as they were pulled by wires up to 25 feet from where they began, over the time span of a second or two. With that footage slowed down to stretch the one-second scenes out to five seconds or more, editor Kirk Baxter of Rock Paper Scissors conformed a rough edit, and in the selected footage, a52’s artists used Autodesk Inferno and Flame to composite the performers into background plates to make them appear at home, in
a park, awaiting an elevator in an office building, etc. Effects artists also performed rig removal on the wires and handled other effects, like clothing repair and replacement, to finesse the seamless finished look of the performers within their respective scenes. At the end of the spot, a52’s artists created titles around the Acura MDX, and artfully layered in a car forming around a family. Rock Paper Scissors Lead Editor Angus Wall did a final color correction in Apple Color.
Tools Autodesk Inferno, Flame, Apple Color
Credits
VFX Supervisor: Patrick Murphy
2D VFX Artists: Stephan Gaillot, Mike Bliss, George Cuddy, Billy Higgins, Carlos Morales
VFX Executive Producer: Ron Cosentino
VFX Producer: Pete King
LEXUS: “POP-UP”
Creative and Production Process Like other spots in ad agency Team One’s sensational Actively Safe campaign for the Lexus RX350, “Pop-Up” was conceived as a stylish, uniquely memorable approach to relating the vehicle’s many Actively Safe features. Through the course of preproduction, it became clear to Director Stylewar, the agency’s creative team, and a52’s lead team of VFX Supervisor Andy Hall and Pro-ducer Sarah Haynes that building a 30-foot-tall pop-up book to accommodate a full-sized Lexus was not practical. As a workaround, production built a giant, full-sized book frame for greenscreen, with tabs and wheels that could be manipulated by actual stagehands, and the actual pop-up book with moving parts was a mere 6 feet high. To capture their live action elements in anticipation of performing a great deal of artistic compositing on the part of a52’s team, Stylewar and Director of Photography Toby Irwin filmed the background actors operating the 30-foot book frame on a greenscreen. Next, they shot each page of the miniature pop-up book opening and closing, as well as the animated movements within the pages. Using the movements of the actors for timing, a52’s Lead Flame Artist Raul Ortego re-timed the live action of each page to match each other’s and the actors’ movements. Autodesk Flame and Smoke were used to rotoscope out the different pop-up pieces, which were then composited together in Flame. For the city scene, a52’s CGI artists recreated every visual element in Maya—using high-resolution stills from the shoot as tex-tures—and tracked them to the live action for final compositing in Flame. For every action of the book, a52’s artists either re-created or re-timed them to ensure a seamless feel to the storytelling. Live action passes taken of the hero Lexus to capture reflections and shadows were also combined in Flame, and virtual holes were created for the pop-up book’s pages—also in Maya—where the Lexus appears. Additional touches by a52’s artists include Maya-created tabs and wheels for the book, the book’s shadow, the page edges and thickness, and the entire cover page and binding. Final Flame flourishes include reflecting the book in the floor, as well as color grading and addition of logo and titles. Smoke was used to assemble the final versions for lay-off.
Tools Autodesk Flame/Inferno, Maya, Smoke
Credits
VFX Supervisor: Andrew Hall
2D VFX Lead Artist: Raul Ortego
2D VFX Artists: Mike Bliss, Tim Bird, Kirk Balden, Brandon Jolley
3D Lead: Dan Gutierrez
3D FX Artists: Chris Janney, Kirk Shintani, Kevin Clarke
VFX Executive Producer: Mark Tobin
VFX Producer: Sarah Haynes
