In addition to their formidable production and post production talent, Brand New School’s efforts on the project included design of a 50-foot long Coca-Cola logo and the casting of more than 40 highly-skilled athletes, including tennis players, skateboarders, yoga practitioners, and more.

“We were asked to create approximately two minutes of content for Coke,” says Jens Gehlhaar, Creative Director at Brand New School. “Specifically, the content is intended for an installation outside the Nokia Theater at L.A. Live. The theater is adjacent to the Staples Center and will be the site of the Grammy Awards. Outside the theater, there are large columns holding 14 huge, vertical screens, as well as one wide format screen over the entrance and another LED billboard on a neighboring building. It is a wacky assortment of 17 different-sized screens, but we have experience with these sorts of installations. The specific instructions from Coke gave us a lot of leeway. They wanted things very specific to the L.A. lifestyle, multicultural in look and feel, and not patronizing in any way. They wanted the focus to be on the active people involved.”

The short films reveal various athletes interacting with a huge white Coca-Cola logo backed by a special purple-red-orange gradient that breaks with the traditional Coca-Cola red in favor of a more L.A.-inspired hue.

Supported with engaging music composed by Machinehead, golfers, soccer and tennis players, wall climbers, and many more athletes all interact very physically with the immense logo. In an age when so much entertainment is achieved through computer-generated models and background, the logo is all the more astounding because it is real.

“After careful consideration, we realized that it would be more authentic to have our live actors interact with a real sculpture,” says Gehlhaar. “It is 15 feet high and more than 50 feet wide and everybody was extremely impressed with it, so much so that Coke insisted on keeping it. We did a timelapse film of its construction, just to commemorate the act.”

The engineering of the structure would eventually be put to the ultimate test, as the cast of some 40 skateboarders, climbers, and others climbed it, jumped on it, ran into it, etc.

“The logo never faltered,” says Gehlhaar proudly. “It was insanely sturdy in the end, especially considering what we put it through. We used no wires on our athletes, so there was no interaction or impact that was faked. It was all real action. It’s filming this kind of elegant, completely realistic live action that has given Brand New School such a great reputation for these kinds of jobs. Also it is rare for an installation job of this complexity to be produced in-camera; traditionally the solution would be more animation-based. There are very few companies that can pull both off.”

The job was not entirely without technological aspects however. The entire two-day shoot was shot against a blue, rather than red, background, and the final edits held more than 70 shots requiring significant keying and compositing work by the Brand New School team, all of which were then composited into a signature gradient environment.

Behind The Scenes – The Making of Coca Cola LA Live

“This was a very challenging and unusual job, but those are the ones we are most excited about,” says Gehlhaar. “Brand New School is getting very good at alternative media installations, and we are eagerly anticipating more opportunities like this. We want to be a market leader in this area.”

ABOUT BRAND NEW SCHOOL
With offices in New York and Los Angeles, Brand New School is a bicoastal directing collective working in all fields of commercial art. Ever evolving, the studio continues to cultivate a sense of wonder and exploration. For its artists and clients alike, BNS represents an opportunity to play at work, to conduct experiments in image-making, and to feed the inspiration that drives the industry.

CREDITS:
Directors:
Brand New School:Jens Gehlhaar & Ludovic Schorno

Shot on stage in Los Angeles

Production & post production:
Brand New School, Los Angeles
Producer:
David Wolfson
Director of Photography:
Ottar Gudnason
Assistant Director:
Patrick Finnegan
Key Grip:
Steve Strausser
Fabricator:
Vision Scenery Corporation
Stylist:
Christine Wada

Designer:
Wakako Ichinose
Still Photographer (banners):
Ian Brook

Editor:
Graeme Pereira
Flame Artist:
Philip Ineno
Post producer:
Craig Houchin

Color
Mark Gethin, MPC, Santa Monica

Client
The Coca-Cola Company, Atlanta

Music
Installation: Machine Head, Los Angeles
Montage: Beyond Music Library

RELATED LINKS:
www.lalive.com
www.brandnewschool.com

About the Movie:

G.I. Joe will be a modern telling of the “G.I. Joe vs. Cobra” storyline and its compelling characters that Hasbro created 25 years ago. The premise of this fantasy is the story of the G.I. Joe team, led by Duke, and their “fight for freedom wherever there is trouble” against the evil Cobra Commander and his Cobra force. This storyline was an instant hit with kids in the early 1980s, spawning a highly popular 3-3/4-inch action figure line, comic book collection and animated series. The G.I. Joe team will not be based in Brussels. Instead, they will be based out of the “Pit” as they were throughout the 1980s comic book series. And, in keeping with the G.I. Joe vs. Cobra fantasy, the movie will feature characters and locations from around the world. Duke, the lead character and head of the G.I. Joe team, will embody the values of bravery and heroism that the first generation of G.I. Joe figures established.

Some of the visual effects post houses used in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra are MPC, Framestore, Digital Domain, Cafe FX and Pixel Playground. See the IMDB link for a full production cast/crew list.

About MPC
MPC creates high-end digital visual effects and computer animation for the feature film, advertising, music and television industries. With studios based in Soho London, Santa Monica LA and Vancouver Canada, this award winning facility has worked on many high profile projects including The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Quantum of Solace and the classic Cadbury ‘Gorilla’s Moment’.
For more information about MPC visit: www.moving-picture.com.

About Digital Domain
Digital Domain is an Academy Award-winning digital production studio with a reputation for innovation and artistry. The studio has created visual effects for 65+ movies that have collectively generated more than $12 billion in worldwide box-office sales, including most recently, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for which it won the Academy Award for Visual Effects. A creative giant in advertising, Digital Domain works with a stellar group of A-list directors including David Fincher, Mark Romanek, Joseph Kosinski, Carl Erik Rinsch and more. Industry recognition for Digital Domain’s advertising work includes many Clio, AICP, and Cannes Lion awards and other industry honors. The company is continually pushing into new territory and is being recognized for its pioneering work in photo-real digital humans and productions that bring the worlds of movies, games, advertising and the web closer together. Digital Domain is privately held and based in Venice, California. www.digitaldomain.com

About Framestore:
Framestore has been working in digital film and video for over 20 years now, creating original and astonishing work that has helped make it the largest visual effects and computer animation studio in Europe.

Among Framestore’s notable commercial credits are Smirnoff Sea (winner, 2007 VES ‘Visual Effects in a Commercial’), The Chemical Brothers The Salmon Dance, Casino Royal – Title Sequence, Vauxhall C’mon campaign, Sure to Go Wild, Guinness noitulovE, Johnnie Walker Fish, Levi’s Odyssey and Guinness Surfer.

Since 2004, Framestore NY has been flying the flag in the world of US commercials, landing work for clients such as GE, FedEx, Hoover, Pepsi, Nike, Smirnoff, and Coca-Cola, and winning top awards including both an Emmy and a VES in 2006.

Framestore’s movie portfolio includes work on such films as The Dark Knight, Australia, A Quantum of Solace, Wanted, Prince Caspian, The Golden Compass, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Children of Men and Superman Returns. http://www.framestore-cfc.com/

About Cafe Fx
CafeFX is an award-winning feature film visual effects facility offering visual effects production and supervision, CG character creation, and 3D animation. Founded in 1993 by Jeff Barnes and David Ebner, CafeFX is located in a 36,000-square-foot studio on an eight-acre campus in the heart of Santa Barbara County. The company’s credits include Spider-Man™ 3, Ghost Rider, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Departed, Eragon, Sin city, King Kong, Memoirs Of A Geisha and The Aviator. www.cafefx.com

About Pixel Playground:
Pixel Playground is a visual effects company dedicated to creating the highest level of visual effects for its clients. Pixel Playground offers a comprehensive list of services ranging from on set visual effects supervision to all visual post production needs. These services include 2D digital compositing, and a full compliment of CGI services. visit: http://www.pixelplaygroundinc.com

Related Links:

Visual Effects Credits from IMDB

Carousel, the centrepiece of the Cinema project, clocks in at a (totally coincidental) two minutes and 19 seconds, but Berg conceived it to work as an endless loop. Visitors to the microsite, www.cinema.philips.com, therefore have the option to ‘spin’ through the film’s single take shot repeatedly, to stop on a specific frame, or to watch it at the preordained speed. The film also contains embedded hotspots, which, when triggered, transport the viewer seamlessly from the heavily posted film to a behind-the-scenes version of the same shot. This constant moving between two layers of reality proved one of the project’s biggest and most ambitious production challenges. Viewers are able to choose between 21:9 and 16:9, turn Ambilight on and off, and “scrub” the film. The microsite’s loader doubles as a credit sequence. Rich media takeover banners drive traffic to the site by teasing viewers with an original Carousel trailer.

Credits

The Cinema campaign was developed at Tribal DDB Amsterdam by global creative director Neil Dawson, creative director/copywriter Chris Baylis, art directors Mariota Essery and Andrew Ferguson, copywriters Carla Madden, agency producers Jeroen Jedeloo and Iwona Echt.

Filming was shot by director Adam Berg via Stink Digital, London, with director of photography Fredrik Backar, executive producers Mark Pytlik, Daniel Bergmann, Stephen Brierley, producers Simon Eakhurst and Stephen Brierley.

Filming in Prague was assisted by production company Stillking, Prague, by line producer Zuzana de Pagter, first art director Jiri Ostry, production designer Peter Kunc, production manager Jiri Kotlas. Stunt co-ordinator was Lada Lahoda at Filmka, Prague.

Editor was Paul Hardcastle at Trim. VFX were done at Redrum, Stockholm, by post production supervisor Richard Lyons. Colorist was Jean-Clement Soret at MPC (Moving Picture Company) London. UK production manager was Jemma Daniel.

Music and sound design were by Michael Fakesch, with further sound design done by Tim Davis.

MPC supervisors from LA and London assisted the two night shoot in LA. To allow a timely workflow and for cleanup to start straight away, 2K scans were graded before the edit was approved. MPC’s main challenge was to remove the camera arm fixed onto the front of the car.

The 2D team had to paint out this arm on moving shots and patch pieces of clean road over the top, which was made harder by the fact that it was raining in the live action plate. The camera’s shadows and car reflections also had to be removed frame by frame as well as the stunt driver who was in the back seat steering the car.

Some of the hero’s action in the car had to re-shot using green screen. These shots needed a background tracked and composited, involving very complicated hair keying. This was achieved using Shake’s extensive keying tools.

The band was also shot green screen on a separate day in New York and the location material was shot later in Los Angeles. This material had to be composited and a light change over them had to be tracked to reflect the headlight interaction. For the final scene when the car crashes the actor had to be shot separately and composited.

Colourist Mark Gethin worked closely with Patrick Daughters to create the dark, moody atmosphere for the spot.

About MPC
MPC creates high-end digital visual effects and computer animation for the feature film, advertising, music and television industries. With studios based in Soho London, Santa Monica LA and Vancouver Canada, this award winning facility has worked on many high profile projects including The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Quantum of Solace and the classic Cadbury ‘Gorilla’s Moment’.
For more information about MPC visit: www.moving-picture.com.

Credits
Track: Wrong
Artist: Depeche Mode
Record Company: Mute Records
Director: Patrick Daughters
Comissioner: John Moule
DoP: Shawn Kim
Production Company: The Directors Bureau
Production Company Producer: Lana Kim
Editor: Akiko Iwakawa @ Final Cut

A complex, multi-layered mystery adventure, “Watchmen” is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the Doomsday Clock (which charts the USA’s tension with the Soviet Union) moves closer to midnight.

When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the outlawed but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes.

As Rorschach reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion (a disbanded group of retired superheroes, only one of whom has true powers) he glimpses a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future. Their mission is to watch over humanity …. but who is watching the Watchmen? ……

This is the world of “Watchmen,” the big-screen adaptation of the most celebrated graphic novel of all time, brought to life for the first time by visionary director Zack Snyder.

“People always said Watchmen was the unfilmable graphic novel,” says Zack Snyder. “The story itself is a pretty straightforward mystery, but inside of that, there’s this huge plot that has international intrigue and a super-villain and everything you want from a superhero story. It doesn’t owe anything to any specific genre; it’s just its own, true to itself and all of its characters.”

The spine-chilling :60 cuts to menacing prophets from various periods in time including: the desert prophet, the oracle, the young Buddhist monk, the blind man, and the voodoo lady; their sensory accounts anecdotally tell the story of impending doom.

Resistance 2 begins by profiling an eerie old blind man in a hospital recanting a horrifying nightmare. Suddenly, we cut to a man shrouded in a cloak aimlessly wondering the desert babbling of the humming noises he has heard from above.

Interspersed scenes from the game mix with supposed reality. Another quick cut takes us to an angelic woman circling a large white rock, a scary voodoo lady, then to a young monk boy lying on a table telling how “they” are coming in large numbers.

Over the next few weeks moo2u will feature each film nominated within the ‘Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects Driven Motion Picture’ category. The films nominated in this category are: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Chronicles of Narnia – Prince Caspian, Hellboy II – The Golden Army, Cloverfield and Iron Man.

‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’
“The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” is the second of C.S. Lewis’s classic fantasy novels to be taken to the big screen. The film was directed by Andrew Adamson with cinematography by Karl Walter Lindenlaub and was released worldwide in the summer of 2008.

The story begins for the four Pevensie children a year after their return from their heroic adventures in “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe”. However time passes at a different pace in the land of Narnia and when Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy return 1,300 years have passed and Narnia is in grave peril.

Prince Caspian, the rightful heir to the Narnian throne, is on the run, pursued by evil forces lead by his wicked Uncle King Miraz. In desperation Caspian magically summons one time rulers of Narnia, the Pevensie children, who find an even greater test of their faith and courage awaits them.

The mamouth CGI effects project required for this film was led by visual effects supervisors Dean Wright and Wendy Rogers who spent over two years overseeing a team of over 1,000 digital artists around the world. Dean Wright also worked as the lead Visual Effects supervisor on ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe’.

Prior to this, fridges had been ‘cast’ and prep work in terms of building models during shooting and editing had been carried out in London. Once the cut was locked, the team in LA began lighting and finalising the animation.

The main challenge was tracking the very fast whip pans and zooms, which were used to create the crowd, action feel. The networked locations allowed a consistently clear, open and transparent approval process between the Director in LA with the team and the Agency based in London.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MOvlk7Yd3g

Over 700 fridges were animated for the end shot. The initial approach was to hand animate each nuance of each fridge impacting the truck, however, during production; a dynamic solution was developed to speed this up.

This new strategy involved running dynamic simulations in RealFlow and writing custom scripts to transfer this animation to a host of different fridge models back in Maya, where all the shots were created. Photoshop was used for texturing and tracking was done with Boujou and PFTrack.

The 2D team removed wires that were suspending the real fridges. Atmospheric smoke was added and close up head replacement was done. Crowds were duplicated and the city underwent clean up. The main challenge was compositing in the 3D elements to match marks on the ground, smoke, debris and other atmospheric elements.

The master grade was added in London by Director of Telecine, Jean-Clement Soret.

‘Fridge Magnet,’ is the first example of MPC using their bases in LA and London to make use of their pipeline of global resources to get the job done and enabling the team to work 24/7 giving a timely, creative and convenient workflow for Clients. The spot is on air from October 9th in Ireland.

CREDITS
Director: Fredrik Bond
Creative Director: Mal Stevenson
Art Director: Pat Hamill
Deputy CD / Copywriter: Mark Nutley
Account Director: Tanya English
DOP: Crille Forsberg
Editor: Tim Thornton-Allen @ Marshall Street
Agency: Irish International BBDO
Agency Producer: Noel Byrne and Onagh Carolan
Production Company: Sonny London
Production Company Producer: Ran Holst

Post Production Company: MPC
Post Production Producer: Andrew Bell (LA) and Scott Griffin (London)
VFX Supervisors: Duncan McWilliam and Franck Lambertz
VFX Team LA: 2D: Aaron Kupferman, Franck Lambertz, Dan Sanders
3D: Chris Clyne, Wayne Hollingsworth, Nick Losq, Duncan McWilliam, Ian Wilson
VFX Team London: 2D: Stirling Archibald, Olivier Jezequel, Matthew Unwin
3D: Tim Civil, Lewis Guarniere, Tobias Meier, Dean Robinson
Telecine: Jean-Clement Soret

(Article by: CGnews.com)