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For Immediate Release a52
FLOODS NEW YORK CITY FOR
HOLLYWOOD—Clio-winning Los Angeles visual effects company a52 today detailed their visual effects and design work for Anonymous Content and director Andrew Douglas for Venables, Bell and Partners’:60 Barclays Global Investors/iShares spot entitled “Clean Slate” which debuted on national cable on Mar. 8. In the dramatic spot, a storm completely floods New York City, trapping a group of financial professionals inside their building’s conference room. The next day, the sun finally breaks through, revealing a bright new day and this message: “Investment advisors: It’s a new day. The new school of investing is here. iShares.com/newschool.” For this project, noted filmmaker, DP and still-photographer Andrew Douglas was tasked with going from start-to-finish in a matter of weeks... and he quickly enlisted the talents of a52, with whom he has collaborated on challenging commercial projects for Audi, Ford, Lincoln, Jeep, Verisign and many others. “As always, a52 brought a level of professionalism, speed and visual flair to a project that was a difficult balancing act of comedy and melodrama, helping me deliver a tonality and realism that literally challenges your eyes,” Douglas said. With assistance from a52’s VFX supervisor/Inferno artist Patrick Murphy and producer Ron Cosentino, Douglas first reviewed a great deal of stock footage to find a key city scene for a52’s team to flood and alter while other live-action elements were filmed. Douglas chose a shot provided by Millennium Stock, showing magic-hour helicopter beauty footage of the city with the gleaming Chrysler Building in the foreground. For the first of their many photo-real feats on this project, a52’s CG department of Denis Gauthier, Westley Sarokin and Ivan DeWolf tracked that stock scene using 3Dequalizer by Science-D-Visions, then created the CG water that rises some 900 feet above the city’s streets in the finished scene using Side Effects Software’s Houdini. Meanwhile, in downtown Los Angeles, Douglas began filming cityscapes and practical special effects shots of water pouring down building stairwells and flooding up into the streets from below. In a vacant office building, business-attired actors were filmed meeting and waiting-out the storm, and one of them was filmed standing inside a window looking out. Douglas, Murphy, Cosentino and crew then traveled to New York City to shoot a number of background plates from various Manhattan rooftops. Back at the a52 studio, under Douglas’ direction, Cosentino and Murphy began working with flat telecine passes of all the live-action elements to be used in the spot’s scores of effects shots. Murphy used Discreet Inferno to color-grade the exterior footage to herald the brooding storm and also added lightning strikes, fog and other atmospheric effects. Since there were no real windows in the conference room scenes, Murphy added the windows and the appropriate views outside, including CG and 2D rain and storm lighting effects. For a scene showing Wall Street under ten feet of rising water, Murphy composited the foreground shot (filmed in Los Angeles), a live-action hot dog cart, signature New York buildings and the CG water from a52’s CGI team. Another exterior building shot looks upward from below fathoms of water, where other CG objects are suspended. We then see the actor looking out the window; in the finished scene, he’s looking out into an ocean of water as a taxi floats by. Like all the spot’s CG elements, the taxi is created in Houdini and rendered using Pixar’s Renderman. At the height of the storm, the stock scene appears... but it is scarcely recognizable in its finished form. The scene is run backwards to reveal water engulfing the city and all but the top 150 feet of the Chrysler Building, and with Murphy’s color-grade, the golden, magic-hour photography has turned dark and menacing. As the delivery deadline drew near, the cut from Douglas and editor Mike Elliot of Mad River Post arrived with interior scenes reflecting the color-grade of Company 3’s Stefan Sonnenfeld. At that point, Murphy went back through every effects shot, using Inferno to color-grade each one to match the look of the interior shots. “The biggest challenge of this project was perfecting the effects in a very limited amount of time,” explained Venables, Bell and Partners producer Craig Allen. “It is an incredible testament to the talents of the artists and CG department at a52 that they were able to master all these water effects shots in such a short period of time. “All of us are delighted with the finished spot,” Allen continued. “Patrick and the CG department did an incredible job of creating and perfecting the flood effects. Similarly, Ron Cosentino did a great job of keeping his team focused in order to meet our airdate.” In addition to Craig Allen, the team for Venables, Bell and Partners also included creative directors Greg Bell and Paul Venables, art director Ray Andrade and copywriter Kevin Frank. Executive producer Darcy Leslie Parsons oversaw the project for a52. Discreet Flame artist Marguerite Cargill also contributed her talents this project. Production was overseen by Anonymous Content’s executive producers Andy Traines and Dave Morrison, and also included producer Suzanne Hargrove. In addition to Michael Elliot, the editorial team from Mad River Post also included executive producer Scott Ward, producer Janie Ford and assistant editor Inome Callahan. The spot’s music was composed by Mike Hewer of Amber Music, where Michelle Curran is executive producer. Kim B. Christensen of Noises Digital handled sound design, and the final mix was handled by mixer John Bolen and producer Pam Doyle at Play. About
a52
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