Shilo Creates Greatness For Guinness
November 11, 2008The filmmakers from creative production company Shilo recently directed and produced a phenomenal new spot for the creative team from ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi London and their clients at Guinness. Working in collaboration with agency creative director Tim Hearn and creative team Dave Govier and Levi Slavin, Shilo - widely known for creating visually poetic content - chose to produce the agency's powerful "Spoken Word" script in a stunning location, where their live-action filmmaking talents could amplify the spot's message.
"What we found most exciting about Shilo was their ability to bring a real magic to every aspect of the film - live-action, design and VFX," said Govier and Slavin. "They're an unbelievable talent."
"I'm on a journey," Burrows begins. "It started 28 years, 12 weeks, 3 days, 6 hours, 36 minutes, and 14, 15, 16 seconds ago. And in this time I've come too far; too far to listen to critics; too far to consider defeat; too far to be less than great... 25, 26, 27, 28. The knocks on my journey mapped out by my scars; they're both story and proof of how I reached for the stars. My hands in the air, my feet on the floor... 41, 42, 43, 44. I'm on a journey, and it won't stop until I do... 49." The words "Reach for Greatness" then appear on-screen, before revealing a bottle of Guinness.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOstivemGgU
"For calling on us to fulfill this script's very tall order, we were honored… and we embraced the challenge with everything we had," said Shilo co-founder, creative director and director André Stringer. "Directing for us is so much about bringing a broad, holistic vision to the table. Shooting the live-action, and directing the performance, as well as seamlessly integrating our poetic design and animated elements all took on equal importance. Nothing was an afterthought."The agency's script specifically called for a man of Caribbean origins, and the strength of the dialogue led Shilo to search for someone who actually personified the character and his story.
"As we began conceiving the production process, a lot of ideas came to the surface," Stringer explained. "For our on-camera talent, we wanted his actions to come across not as a performance, but as more of a ‘letting of his soul.' When you watch the spot, that's exactly what Ainsley brought to this."
"We felt pretty strongly that featuring Ainsley in this type of space would bring in some important texture, personality and grit - and also that it provided an interesting visual metaphor for the theater of his mind. Levi and Dave totally got behind the idea, and the location we all agreed upon was The Peninsula at Bayonne Harbor in Bayonne, New Jersey." Stringer added.To capture their live-action footage on-location, Stringer and his director of photography Martin Ahlgren used the ARRIFLEX 435 Xtreme 35mm motion picture camera, and also the ARRICAM ST for hand-held shots - as well as ARRI lighting - and their choice of film stock was Kodak Vision2 200T 5217 color negative film.
"We embraced the black and beige palette of the Guinness branding as the main elements of our look," said Stringer. "The milky shadows and striking beams of light mix with the flow of our graphic elements - everything was an attempt to bring the beer to life in a metaphorical fashion."As noted earlier, the creative also called for Shilo to create original animated content, which appears around Burrows as he speaks, to illustrate his words and thoughts. At first appearing as a flowing atmospheric trail following the artist, shapes organically materialize, symbolizing many different images of time, travel, growth, freedom and more. For this aspect of the production, Shilo's associate creative director/designer Evan Dennis, 3D lead Tamir Sapir, Stringer and their fellow artists used Adobe Creative Suite 3 for design, Autodesk Maya for animation and 3D, Adobe Photoshop for texturing, Adobe After Effects for compositing, and Final Cut Pro for editing. FumeFX was also used for the creation of particles, and Maya nCloth was used for cloth simulation.
"Guinness represents greatness, and for this short film powerfully representing a person's journey toward greatness, we had a goal of making sure that every frame, every nuance, felt authentic and on-brand," Stringer concluded. "Looking at the finished result, we're extremely proud, and again, we express our deep appreciation to the creatives at Saatchi & Saatchi, and their clients at Guinness, for putting their faith in us."About Shilo Shilo is an Emmy Award-winning creative production company representing a group of filmmakers led by directors Jose Gomez and Andre Stringer. Internationally known for creating original and commissioned work that is powerful, provocative and visually extraordinary, Shilo's deeply held passions for design-infused storytelling and their innovative applications of live-action, design, and animation techniques deliver breakthrough experiences for screens large and small. From its studios in New York and Del Mar, California, where recent projects have spanned short films, commercials and music videos, Shilo has the capacity and experience to originate ideas and handle all aspects of production. visit Shilo online at www.shilo.tv CREDITS Project Name: Guinness "Spoken Word" Length: :60 Film Location: The Peninsula at Bayonne Harbor - Bayonne, NJ Market and Media Distribution: Caribbean TV Advertising Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi City/State: London, England Creative Director: Tim Hearn Creative Team: Dave Govier, Levi Slavin Executive Broadcast Director: Andy Gulliman Regional Planning Director: Karen Johnstone Account Director: Frederic Roger Account Manager: Victoria Reiz TV Producer: Laura Mueller TV Production Assistant: Emma Wolanski Production Company: Shilo at Hanrahan City/State: Bicoastal, USA Director: Shilo Creative Director: André Stringer Director of Photography: Martin Ahlgren Associate Creative Director/Designer: Evan Dennis Lead Artist: Tamir Sapir Editors: Josh Bodnar, André Stringer, Galen Summer Illustrator: Zach Johnsen Animators: Henning Koczy, Craig Kohlmeyer, Stieg Retlin, Warren Heimall Compositors: Bashir Hamid, Tamir Sapir, André Stringer 3D Artists: Warren Heimall, Craig Kohlmeyer, Christina Ku, Youngmin Kim, Chris Fung, Joji Tsuruga Rotoscopers: Constance Conrad, Joel Voelker, Chris West, Stieg Retlin Trackers: Chris West, Joel Voelker Producer: Lindsay Bodanza Line Producer: Nina Goldberg Executive Producer: Tracy Chandler Executive Producer for Hanrahan: Mark Hanrahan Music and Sound Design : Human Principal Talent: Ainsley Burrows (Article by: CGnews.com)Continue reading
Disney’s Bolt Due for Release
November 11, 2008For Super-Dog Bolt, every day is filled with adventure, danger and intrigue, at least until the cameras stop rolling. When the star of a hit TV show is accidentally shipped from his Hollywood soundstage to New York City, he begins his biggest adventure yet, a cross-country journey through the real world to get back to his owner and co-star, Penny. Armed only with the delusions that all his amazing feats and powers are real, and the help of two unlikely traveling companions,a jaded, abandoned housecat named Mittens and a TV-obsessed hamster named Rhino; Bolt discovers he doesn’t need superpowers to be a hero. Bolt is the latest Disney CGI which is due for release on both regular and digital 3_D on 26 November 2006. Formerly known as American Dog, the film came from an original concept by Chris Sanders (Lilo and Stitch), about a pampered pooch who ends up in the Nevada desert. The film was eventually directed by Chris Williams.
During a 2008 investor conference, Walt Disney's Animation chief creative officer John Lasseter explained the synopsis: "Bolt is owned by a little girl whose father is this incredible scientist. Now, to protect the little girl, he gives the dog superpowers, but the dad is kidnapped by these bad guys . . . and the dog is protecting her by fighting off the bad guys with his superpowers, and for 10 years they search for the father and battle the bad guys."
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaaF9MShlRQ&start=30
"Lasseter continued: "But all this is actually a TV show. You see, Bolt is a star of the most popular television show . . . but he thinks this is real. He lives on the soundstage and that's all he knows, so all of this is real to him. In one unfortunate incident, he falls into a box and he's shipped from his home on the soundstage to New York City and he comes out of it and he thinks it's all part of his life, where he has superpowers."
"But he is in the real world and nothing works like he thinks . . . he's trying to figure out what the heck is going on with the help of this crazy alley cat and this super fan hamster who is always in his hamster ball . . . he realizes that he is just an actor on a TV show, that his entire life, 10 years of his short life, has been spent being a fake, that he is not really what he thinks he is. It crushes him, but, really, he learns what it is to be a true dog." said Lasseter.
New Tutorial: Photoshop: Seamless Texture Tiling
November 11, 2008In this Photoshop tutorial you will learn how to properly create seamless tiling textures for use in your own projects. This tutorial was created in Photoshop CS3 Extended but can be used in earlier versions. Menu plaement in earlier versions may be differently located then shown in this tutorial. Files you will need: Original Source File: http://www.moo2u.com/blog-uploads/seamless-set/seamless-textures-source-file.jpg Project File Completed: http://www.moo2u.com/blog-uploads/seamless-set/seamless-textures-project-file.jpg OK! Lets start out by opening photoshop. Now open your source file and save your new project in .psd file format. You should note that in this tutorial we will be working on making a 512x512 seamless tiling texture. The image size of your current project should be 1000x625.
