A dancing chick. What could possibly be more cute? This is Asda’s brand ad for their 2014 Easter campaign. Director Christian Bevilacqua didn’t want this to be another CG dancing animal advert so we created this spot using real baby chicks. The little chicks were placed on strips of cardboard and gently moved around to seem like they were dancing. The cardboard rig was then removed in Flame by reconstructing the floors and walls that they obscured. This required camera tracking the shot environment and re-projecting painted clean backgrounds. The chicks were then rotoscoped back over the cleaned up set. We also reconstructed parts of the chick’s legs that had been obscured by the cardboard rig. Shadows of the dancing chicks were then recreated and projected back onto the reconstructed environment. There was no CGI, no puppets, no robots and no glue used in the making of this commercial. Although the chicks were unharmed during the making of the ad, somebody did tell me that they were fed to a snake after filming. Maybe they were joking. You can see a breakdown of the VFX work on this page here.
Tag: rushes post production
ASDA - 'Tweets'
Product: Asda
Agency: VCCP
Producer: Sally Miller
Creatives: Jermaine Hillman, Paul Kocur
Creative Director: Janetta Lewin, Mark Orbine
Production Company: Stink
Director: Christian Bevilacqua
Producer: Malachy McAnenny
Editor: Al Sinclair
Post Production Company: Rushes
Exec Producer: Kristy May Currie
Producer: Mireille Antoine
VFX: Leo Weston , Matt Jackson
Colourist: Simone Grattarola
Foxes - 'Holding onto Heaven'
Foxes turns the world upside-down with some help from a Milo Motion control rig, lots of maths and a load of Flame time. I previssed these VFX shots in Flame first alongside director Henry Schofield to work out what was possible on the Milo. We then matched the moves on set. The same scene was shot twice on set with green screen from head height upwards. The moves were then flipped on the rig and shot again on the same floor. We flipped one of them upside-down again in Flame and joined the 2 plates together. Then smoothed over the joins and removed the tracks for the rig. I think the 4 effects shots work really well. This video is of the Director’s edit.
Production Company: Cavia
Director: Henry Scolfield
Post Production Company: Rushes
VFX Supervisor: Leo Weston
VFX: Leo Weston & Johnny Hicks
Colourist: Simone Grattarola
Motion Control: The VFX Company
BASF - 'Working for Water' VFX Breakdown
A breakdown of the VFX work done on BASF’s “Working for Water” film. I went to South Africa to supervise this shoot. Ideally for a crowd replication shot made up of multiple moving plates, you’d normally want a motion control rig, but in the South African mountains that’s just not going to happen, so we made do with a crane with laser pen attached, pointing at a plank of wood with chalk marks drawn on, and a man with a stopwatch counting aloud. I made sure that the crane operator hit one chalk mark each second and that the front and back positions of the line of people was consistent between each plate. Due to the scale of the scene, the perspective on the mid to far away plates doesn’t change too much over the duration so any slight discrepancy between the different plates was fixable with stabalisation. The main composite was put together in Flame back at Rushes by Matt Jackson.
Agency: M & C Saatchi
Producer: Mary Fostiropoulos
Creative Director: Simon Dicketts
Production Company: Sweet Spot Content
Director: Miles Goodsall
Producer: Linda Notelovitz
Post Production Company: Rushes
Producer: Carl Grinter
Colourist: Simona Harrison
VFX: Matt Jackson, Leo Weston
Nuke: Noel Harmes, Sarah Breakwell
ASDA - 'Wine'
One of many ads completed at Rushes for Asda, Christmas 2013. This one features 3 variations of one technique to pull off the 3 transitions between the 3 locations. The transitions were shot twice (once in each environment) using a steadicam rig. Mix and overlay was essential on set to get the timings of each handover as perfectly matched as possible. In Flame, each plate was stabalised, aligned, and then elements were individually morphed and combined with background wipes to complete the feeling of moving seamlessly from house to house.
Agency: VCCP
Production Company: Park Village
Director: Alan Friel
Post Production Company: Rushes
VFX: Leo Weston
Kings of Leon - 'Supersoaker'
Music video for the debut single from the album ‘Mechanical Bull’. Each shot was rotoscoped and multiple treatments and grades were applied to individual elements in each composite to create a scrapbook type feel.
Production Company: Academy
Director: WIZ
Post Production Company: Rushes
VFX: Leo Weston & Matt Jackson
Colourist: Simone Grattarola
ASOS - 'Charlotte Free'
1 of 3 online ads for clothing brand ASOS, directed by Luke Monaghan. This is my my favourite of the three. VFX work included set extensions and beauty work.
Director: Luke Monaghan
Post Production Company: Rushes
VFX: Leo Weston
FCUK - 'I am the Collection' Trailer
The campaign trailer for the “I am the Collection” series of French Connection UK ads.
Product: French Connection
Agency: 101
Creative Director: Richard Flintman
Agency Producer: Jack Waters
Copywriter: Dirk Van Dooren
Production Company: OneSix7
Directors: Leila & Damien de Blinkk
Producer: Abi Hodson
Cinematography: Marc Gomez del Moral
Art Director: Alice Stein
Editing Company: Cut & Run
Editor: Ben Campbell
Post Production Company: Rushes
VFX: Leo Weston
Colourist: Simone Grattarolla
FCUK - 'I Am The Suit'
Created by 101, directed and photographed by Leila and Damien de Blinkk, styled by Georgina Hodson with cinematography by Marc Gomez del Moral. FCUK’s “I am the Collection” campaign marks a change from past creative communications, focusing on the clothes and celebrating the power and the possibility of the garment.
Product: French Connection
Agency: 101
Creative Director: Richard Flintman
Agency Producer: Jack Waters
Copywriter: Dirk Van Dooren
Production Company: OneSix7
Directors: Leila & Damien de Blinkk
Producer: Abi Hodson
Cinematography: Marc Gomez del Moral
Art Director: Alice Stein
Editing Company: Cut & Run
Editor: Ben Campbell
Post Production Company: Rushes
VFX: Leo Weston
Colourist: Simone Grattarolla
W.I.C - 'Nowhere Flag'
One of a handful of videos I directed for this band. This was shot with no budget at all across a number of weekends in central London. Of course, London is never empty so I did a lot of painting out of people, taxis and buses. I turned off the screens in Piccadilly Circus and all street lamps and shop window lighting, tracked in a load of demolition tape and then comped the explosions from the news footage of the US “shock & awe” bombing of Baghdad onto the view of London from Parliament hill (And knocked over the Shard – which had been completed that week). I also replaced all of the skies with moody clouds to hide the fact that the weather was different every day that we shot.
Director: Leo Weston
Camera: Alex Pyper
Editor: Leo Weston
Post Production Company: Rushes
VFX: Leo Weston
Colourist: Jack Mcginity
Hyundi - 'Big'
A car drives past loads of stuff that is big. Most of the VFX work was done by Matt Jackson. I comped the sequence with the chandelier above the roundabout.
Agency: M & C Saatchi
Creative Director: Simon Dicketts
Production Company: Serious Pictures
Director: John Pardue
Post Production Company: Rushes
VFX: Matt Jackson & Leo Weston
