In cinematography, motion control is the use of computerized automation to allow precise control of, and repetition of, camera movements. It is often used to facilitate visual effects photography.

I spoke with Rik Shorten, visual effects supervisor at Culver City, California’s Zoic Studios, about his use of motion control and how the technology has changed since it was introduced over three decades ago. Shorten produces motion-controlled effects for CBS’ visually-groundbreaking forensic drama, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. He recently took home a VES Award for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Broadcast Program for his work on the “frozen moment” sequence in CSI’s tenth-season opener.

“I didn’t work on the original 2001: A Space Odyssey,” Shorten says, “or back in the Star Wars days in the 70s when computer-controlled cameras were first developed. But fundamentally, the way the technology works hasn’t changed. The rig I use almost weekly on CSI is the original rig from [David Lynch’s 1984 science-fiction film] Dune. The Kuper controller, the head that controls the rig, runs on MS-DOS. It’s a really old-school programming language that they used for these original systems, that hasn’t really changed because it hasn’t had to. It’s a coordinate-based system, XYZ, and we can write the moves we need. The way we do it today is the same way they would have programmed it 20 years ago. So from that perspective, the technology hasn’t increased.

The way the technology works hasn’t changed. The rig I use on CSI is the original rig from 1984’s Dune…

“What has changed is that the rigs have gotten smaller, lighter and quieter. They now have the ability to run silently — they used to be so loud that you couldn’t record dialogue with them. Today we have smaller rigs that can fit through doorways – they’re made out of carbon fiber pieces now, they’re not the behemoths they used to be — and you can have actors delivering dialogue in the same scene as a motion-control move.

“So how we use them hasn’t changed, but slowly but surely they’ve made progress. Some weeks I use the old rigs versus the new ones, because that’s all I need, and the moves are simple enough. We have a system that’s 30 years old that we use side-by-side with a system built three or four years ago. And we interchange them based on the needs of the shot.

“As far as CSI, there are two ways we use motion control. We do stand-alone in-camera shots with the motion-control rig, where we’re flying over a prosthetic, or we’re traveling around a prop, and we need to get a macro shot; we use them a lot for macro photography. We have a couple of different snorkel lenses we use on the systems; one’s an endoscopic lens, and one is a probe lens, and they were both designed for medical photography. They’re both barrel lenses, about 12” long. The endoscopic lens is a fixed lens, sort of a wide-angle lens; it’s a tiny skinny little lens you can stick through a donut hole. If you see any shots where the camera goes in-between something where it seems like it shouldn’t go, that’s the lens we use.

“The probe lens is a little bit bigger, but it has multiple lens sizes, so we can go as wide as a 9mm or 12mm lens, for super-wide shots; right up to your prime lenses, your 22s, 25s, 30s, whatever it is. We use that in the same way, for getting into tight spots, and for getting macro, because the close-focus on these lenses is only about six inches. That’s a lot tighter than a normal lens can get.

“We use these cameras to get that sort of fantastical camera move that a Steadicam or a dolly couldn’t do. So when it’s got to rotate on three axes and fly in, that’s when we’ll program something in motion control. It’s like a 3D rendered camera, but we’re actually shooting it in real life. It frees us up to do more aggressive, creative moves.

Rik Shorten with Director of Photography David Drzewiecki (center); with unidentified crew member and actress.

“The other way we use motion control is for multiple passes — like in the old days where they did three or four passes of the starship Enterprise with different lighting setups, and combined them all later. We don’t do much of that these days, at least in television; I’m sure they still do it in features. We use it for multiple layering. We’ll do the same scene with different elements in three or four passes, all broken apart with the same repeatable move; then we’ll put them all back together so we can affect the different elements in different ways.

“We do ghost shots every week. We’ll have a production plate without a foreground actor in it, just a background. We’ll track that plate here at Zoic. The data is then converted to XYZ coordinate data — ASCII files that MS-DOS can read off old-school 3½“ floppies — so the Kuper controller on the motion control rig can mimic the camera move from the track plate that we shot in first unit. When I put that data in, and I have my background plate and my video setup, I run them together and they’ll run at the same time. The camera will mimic what the first unit camera did.

“Let’s say a guy is firing a gun in front of the greenscreen, and he’s supposed to be a ghost image superimposed into the scene. I’ll shoot him on greenscreen, with that tracked camera move; and then when I come back here to Zoic, I’ve got a motion control pass on the greenscreen, and I’ve got my first unit plate, and the two line up perfectly. That’s how we get all the stylized transition pieces, and all those layers that CSI uses to great effect, because we have the capacity to translate and then to reshoot at a later date using the motion control system.

Recreating a scene on the greenscreen that was shot in the field is always a challenge…

“The first time I saw this used was in [1996’s] Multiplicity with Michael Keaton – that’s when I saw this tech first exploding, having the same person in the same scene, over and over. There were a lot of production cheats used for years, with locked plates and simple split-screen; but this technology allows you to travel 360 degrees around somebody, and go into the scene and come back out of the scene; and people can cross and interact and do other things, that they could not do without this system. If you’re using live action elements for these high-concept shots, then motion control is the only way to do it.”

Shorten says that precision is an important issue, just as it was with traditional locked-plate shots. “Sometimes we don’t have the exact lens, we’re off by a few mils. Say they used a 50mm lens and I only have a 45mm, sometimes there’s a little eye matching that needs to happen. To say it’s plug-and-play is disingenuous. You need to understand the limitations of the system.

“Recreating a scene on the greenscreen that was shot in the field is always a challenge. You need to expect there’s going to be some compensation; you’re going to have to do a little eye matching, playing shots back and doing an A-over-B in our video assist, and then adjusting your frame rates and composition, adjusting the speed of the moves. A lot of times, even with the track data, we’ll have to make some on-the-fly compensations to get things to sit in there correctly.

“We do surveys on location, as far as distances to camera and understanding where the actors are supposed to be in the greenscreen instance. How far away from the camera is the actor supposed to be in the scene, that’s where we start. When we transfer the data, we have a general idea that the camera’s six feet high, it’s five degrees tilted up, and 22 feet from our subject. But when you get it in the studio and do the A-over-B, you might realize that you need to be zero instead of five degrees, or you need to be four feet closer, or you need to change your lens a little bit. The elements have to line up visually, not just by the numbers, so they’re actually going to work when you look at the images together.”

Shorten says that some problems with matching can be fixed digitally. “There is a lot we can work with digitally. It’s not very often we will shoot something in motion control, come back here and have to throw it out completely. Usually it’s salvageable, even if we’re off for some reason.”

Shorten’s greatest challenge is in helping the television production community become comfortable with motion capture technology. “There is still a fear of using this technology, even though it’s been around for years, because it’s still considered to be the domain of feature films, and commercials and music videos that have more time and money than most productions believe they have.

Rik Shorten on the stage.

“There is an education process, that we’ve been quietly working on for a long time. ‘Motion control’ really is a four-letter word for a lot of production managers, who say ‘I don’t have the time, I don’t know the technology, I don’t know how to use it, I don’t know why I need it, and you’re going to kill my one-liner if I have to take five hours to set up a motion control shot. We just won’t do it.’ We run up against this all the time.

“And this is even on shows like CSI, which is comfortable with the technology. Every ninth day we have a motion control day, even if they are simple in-camera things. They understand it, but they will bounce shots. When I suggest taking my motion control off my second unit day, and putting it on set – as soon as I’m doing it with main unit actors, in the middle of the day when there’s 150 crew around, suddenly even shows that are comfortable with the technology get very nervous.

Definitely there’s a lot of apprehension, but it’s such a great technology…

“The hope is that with these smaller and quieter rigs, with the idea that we can do pre-viz and set surveys so that when we show up on set we know exactly where our rig is going to go, we can get in and get set up very quickly, and start rolling video takes to show a director within a couple of hours. We can have our pre-viz and our moves written, if we do our surveying correctly, so that we’re not starting from scratch. We don’t need a week to do a motion control move.

“Definitely there’s a lot of apprehension, but it’s such a great technology. These shots can’t be accomplished any other way, without costing too much. If you don’t shoot it this way, if you try to back into it later, you need all kinds of digital fixes and compromises. You spend money somewhere. Getting it in-camera, and doing as much as you can physically — for a lot of set-ups motion control is head-and-shoulders above any other technique, from a financial standpoint and for the way it’s going to come out for your show.

“It’s about trying to build that trust and that faith with productions. We’re not suggesting motion control because we want to noodle around with computer-controlled cameras; it’s because it really is the best way to achieve your shot, and get the elements we need to make something really dynamic for your show.”

More info: Zoic Studios Wins Big at 2010 VES Awards; Zoic Stops Time, Creates Historic ‘Frozen Moment’ Sequence for CBS’ ‘CSI’ Premiere.

Zoic Studios’ Loni Peristere will present “The Future is Now: Immersive Advertising as Gameplay” at SXSW Interactive 2010 in Austin, Texas on March 16th.

Peristere, the director of the first ever “4-D” interactive commercial (for Killzone 2), examines the future of advertising with a look at game-changing moments in various disciplines.

It’s a new age in which viewers are participants, and brand connectivity – even loyalty – can be won by placing the consumer in a starring role, literally or figuratively. Using key examples from various industries, Peristere will examine paradigm-shifting developments past and current to posit what is coming on the horizon.

It’s a bold future where opportunity, and enjoyment, abound.

Location: SXSW Interactive
Date: Tuesday, March 16
Time: 3:30 PM

Loni Peristere co-founded Culver City, California’s award-winning Zoic Studios. He is an Executive Creative Director for the commercial, episodic, video game and feature film divisions of the company, overseeing and guiding productions with a vast scope and reach.

As a director, he has helmed numerous advertising projects for Killzone, PlayStation, Budweiser, ESPN/Nascar, Adidas and Mini Cooper. Peristere  won an Emmy for Special Visual Effects in a Television Series for Zoic’s contribution to Joss Whedon’s Firefly. His collaboration with Joss Whedon has spanned more than a decade, including work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Serenity, and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

The 17th annual SXSW Interactive festival will take place March 12-16, 2010 in Austin, Texas.

An incubator of cutting-edge technologies, the event features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, scores of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable line up of special programs showcasing the best new websites, video games and startup ideas the community has to offer. From hands-on training to big-picture analysis of the future, SXSW Interactive has become the place to experience a preview of what is unfolding in the world of technology.

More info: Read about the Killzone 2 spot; the SXSW web site.

In February, members of the Zoic team were invited to attend the NASCAR Auto Club 500, part of the Sprint Cup Series, at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California. Zoic Studios has worked on a number of commercial spots for ESPN and NASCAR, and the trip was a way for the clients to thank the Zoic team.

The Zoic pros who attended the race included: CG Supervisor Michael Cliett, Senior Editor Dmitri Gueer, Commercial Creative Director Leslie Ekker, Executive Producer Steve Schofield, Producer Neil Ingram, and Lead 3D Artist Dave Funston.

Here’s a quick “sizzle” reel from the trip:

Cliett discussed his experiences from the trip, and shared his collection of photos.

“[The other] guys got race passes through Coke Zero,” Cliett says, “and I went as a guest of [advertising agency] Wieden+Kennedy. We did work for them on two ESPN NASCAR spots; ‘Dominoes,’ which has been all over the airwaves, and ‘Variables,’ which airs in April. They were gracious enough to give me a ‘Hot Pass’ which enabled me unlimited access to the pits and the drivers before, during and after the race.

“I took a lot of photo reference for future NASCAR spots. Every year we seem to produce one or two commercials with NASCAR as the primary theme, so it’s good to have future reference for that. And just witnessing the race, and the demographics of the racetrack itself, is going to help us in future production.

“One thing I really enjoyed about the race was being in the pits, being around the cars and the drivers. The drivers were spending time with their families and kids, and they went through these rituals. Some were doing calisthenics, some were praying. It was fascinating to see drivers like Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin, these guys who are NASCAR legends, to be up close and personal with these guys. Really seeing them on a human level, and not just as race car drivers, was pretty cool.

From left: Zoic’s Steve Schofield, Leslie Ekker and Michael Cliett.

“The race was very exciting. The pit crews can change all four tires, fill the car with gas, and tighten the suspension, all this stuff, in 15 seconds or less, before getting the car out. Most of them are around 11-12 seconds – I timed a couple.

“The race was so loud – it was like being in the loudest nightclub you’ve ever been to, and standing directly next to one of the speakers. If you were standing two feet away from me and I was screaming at the top of my lungs, you wouldn’t have been able to hear me. It was very loud in the pits when they would roll in and the cars were coming by, but Les and the guys up in the stands said it was loud up there too — you had to scream to be heard. If you didn’t have ear plugs, you were going to have hearing damage. It was like 42 jet planes flying at full afterburner. At one point I even walked to the middle of the infield, the furthest away from the track. This track is two miles in diameter, so if you’re in the middle, you’re at least a half mile away from any car, and it was still loud there. You had to yell to be heard.

“I have a professional interest in NASCAR; but I’m also originally from Texas, so I’m a Southern guy at heart. My parents live in Tennessee right now; lots of their friends are into NASCAR, so they get very excited when they hear I’m working on a NASCAR spot. Apparently a lot of my parents’ friends, when they told them I got to go to the pits and be there during a NASCAR race, were very excited and envious. I’m a casual NASCAR fan – but I’m a car guy, a huge car nut, so anything related to cars, I’m interested in.

“I met Kyle Busch. He was the star of our second NASCAR spot, ‘Variables.’ He remembered [Zoic co-founder] Loni Peristere from Florida, where the spot was shot last November. He was about to get in his car, so we couldn’t talk too much, but I wished him good luck in the race. He said ‘thank you’ and to tell everyone at Zoic ‘hello.’

“I also met Kasey Kahne. We did a Budweiser commercial with him in January 2009. We originally shot that commercial with four live-action cars and no people in the stands, at Fontana. We ended up populating the race with all-CG cars, making it look like there was a real-live race going on; and then doing crowd replacement in the stands. That was a real fun spot. So I said ‘hi’ to Kasey, and he remembered us from Budweiser. Unfortunately, he spun out early on in the race, and did some damage to his oil pan. He came into the pits – I have pictures of his car getting worked on. He did finish the race, but I think he was last place.”

See Michael Cliett’s gallery of photos from the 2010 NASCAR Auto Club 500 below.

More info: Auto Club Speedway; Zoic Studios at the NASCAR Auto Club 500 photo set on Flickr; “Zoic Brings Photo-real CG to Broadcast TV with ESPN NASCAR ‘Dominoes’” on IDYE.

It was the “night of Avatar and Zoic” on Sunday evening, as Zoic Studios was victorious in three categories at the VES Awards, held at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, California. The annual event recognizes outstanding visual effects in more than twenty categories of film, animation, television, commercials and video games.

“Zoic Studios is extremely proud to have achieved this level recognition from the VES,” said Andrew Orloff, Zoic’s executive creative director. “It’s been a fantastic year for us, and it is great to be recognized for the creative work we’ve all put into the broadcast medium. All the artists from Zoic this year, winners and nominees alike should be proud of the work they have done in continuing to raise the bar in television visual effects.”

Zoic earned the following VES awards:

Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Broadcast Program
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Ep. 1001 “Family Affair” — Rik Shorten, Sabrina Arnold, Steve Meyer, Derek Smith

Outstanding Created Environment in a Broadcast Program or Commercial
V – “Pilot” Atrium and Ship Interiors — Chris Zapara, Chris Irving, David Morton, Trevor Adams

Outstanding Compositing in a Broadcast Program or Commercial
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Ep. 1001 “Family Affair” — Derek Smith, Christina Spring, Steve Meyer, Zach Zaubi

In addition to Zoic’s honors, Avatar was the evening’s big winner, taking home six awards including Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects Driven Motion Picture. The animated feature film Up was honored with three awards, including Outstanding Animation in an Animated Feature Motion Picture.

For those unable to attend the live event, the 2010 VES Awards can be viewed on Friday, March 5 at 10pm ET/PT on REELZCHANNEL.

Congratulations to everyone at Zoic on this momentous achievement!

For more info: The official VES site; read about CSI and V.

On Wednesday evening, Overture Films held a special fan premier event for its new horror film, The Crazies, which opens today. The movie is a remake of the 1973 George A. Romero classic, and stars Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood, Live Free or Die Hard), Radha Mitchell (Surrogates) and Joe Anderson (Amelia). It tells the story of a small Iowa town devastated by an unknown toxin that causes insanity and death.

Invited guests, who included fandom journalists and horror bloggers, were treated to an immersive experience from the moment they pulled up in their cars. The KCET public television studios in Hollywood were transformed for the evening into beleaguered Ogden Marsh, Iowa. As guests arrived, they were pulled from their cars by military personnel, and marched past army vehicles and through metal detectors to a medical examination area. Nearby, citizens were assaulted, cuffed and herded into pens by soldiers, while moaning bodies lay on gurneys or were stacked in body bags. After guests were checked for contamination, they were issued wristbands indicating whether they were infected or clear, and then herded onto school buses with blackened windows. Military instructions were blared over loudspeakers while the sound of helicopters was heard overhead.

The after-party on KCET studios’ Stage B.

After being driven around for a while, the guests were released in front of a movie theater, issued rations (popcorn), and taken inside to watch the film.

Afterward, guests were invited back to the KCET lot (despite the bus ride, it was just across the street) to enjoy dinner, music and an open bar, and to hobnob with director Breck Eisner and stars Olyphant and Mitchell. There were also demonstrations from various companies that worked on the film. Guests could watch a stunt show and see a stunt performer set on fire; be turned into Crazies by professional makeup artists; or be strapped into a harness and “hanged” by the neck.

Eisner, Olyphant and Mitchell pose at the Zoic booth.

Culver City, California’s Zoic Studios, which provided visual effects for the film, offered a VFX “before-and-after” reel; and Zoic co-founder Loni Peristere was on hand to answer fans’ questions, along with compositing supervisor Aaron Brown, who flew down from Zoic’s Vancouver, British Columbia studio just for the occasion. Also, guests were invited to pose in front of a greenscreen and get professionally composited into a still shot of a nuclear explosion from the film. A team of Zoic compositors created over 100 images over the course of the evening, which were emailed to fans.

The evening was an incredible success, and fans had to be kicked out when the bar shut down at 12:30am. For more information about The Crazies, visit the official web site.

View all the images from the event below; or follow this link to the Flickr page.

This Thursday, three Zoic pros will discuss the VFX of ABC’s V at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood.

Zoic Studios’ creative director Andrew Orloff will head up the presentation, which also includes pipeline supervisor Mike Romey discussion the ZEUS Shotgun pipeline, and senior compositor Johnathan R. Banta on compositing.

The event, “The Making of: Heroes and V,” will also feature talks by Stargate Studios’ Mark Spatny and Eric Grenaudier. It takes place this Thursday, February 25th, at Gnomon’s Cahuenga Blvd. campus, from 6 to 9pm.

More info: Gnomon School web site; “Zoic Brings Visitors to Earth for ABC’s ‘V’” and “Zoic Studios’ ZEUS: A VFX Pipeline for the 21st Century” on IDYE

Eleven top NASCAR drivers are having a bad day, grumbling into their car radio mics. But once in the crew pit, each driver is offered a cold, refreshing bottle of Coca-Cola. Back on the track, the drivers are so exhilarated they begin singing “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke,” as bewildered fans listen in over headphones.

The 60-second commercial, which also has two 30-second versions, premiered this last Sunday, Valentine’s Day, during the broadcast of the Daytona 500 on ESPN. It hearkens back to the 1971 commercial “Hilltop,” probably the most famous Coke commercial in history, which introduced the song. The new spot, entitled “Harmony,” features NASCAR drivers Greg Biffle, Clint Bowyer, Jeff Burton, Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick, Bobby Labonte, Joey Logano, Ryan Newman, David Ragan, Elliott Sadler and Tony Stewart.

See the “Harmony” spot here, at the end of a feature about the making of the commercial; the spot begins at 4:10.

The commercial does not appear to be effects-heavy, but appearances can be deceiving. It was assembled from a number of separate elements, including CG cars and digitally-altered stock footage. The VFX were created by Culver City, California’s Zoic Studios, which produces effects for commercials, feature films and episodic television, such as ABC’s V, FOX’s Fringe and CBS’ CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

“The agency went to the NASCAR archives and pulled stock footage,” says Zoic executive producer, commercials Erik Press, “and they cut together what they envisioned as a race.

“Then they filled it in with close-ups of the actual drivers, which were shot on the racetrack in Charlotte, North Carolina. Those were inserted in the edit. [Commercial creative director] Les Ekker shot back plates for footage outside of the vehicles. Our task was to take stock footage, interiors of drivers, and plates of driving shots, and mix them all together and make them appear as one entire race.”

“Mostly the work consisted of taking their ‘hero’ celebrity drivers, and generating driving plates,” explains Neil Ingram, a Zoic producer.

“They wanted us to make these moments inside of the car to feel like ‘found’ footage, like you’re tapping into the live feed while they’re driving. Part of a NASCAR race is that you can rent headphones, and listen to the realtime exchanges of the drivers and the crews. The spectators that we cut away to are listening to the radios, and they’re bewildered by the fact that these drivers are all singing together.

“First we had to make the interior driving spots look realistic. Then we had to work on a degradation look, to make the shots match the practical realtime images that are actually from the cars; there are some of those shots in the spot.

“We had some CG augmentation on shots, and then ran it through compression. The cameras they use in the cars are ICONIX — they shoot back realtime images to a broadcast tower. They’re true HD cameras, but they get compressed with MPEG-2 compression. So we did some experimentation with different levels of MPEG and JPEG damage, to match the look. But these are celebrity drivers and these are product shots, so we had to find a balance between not getting too much degradation, but making them still feel ‘found.’”

“It was a fun job,” says Zoic co-founder Chris Jones, who was creative director for the VFX. “It has all the good elements for a visual effects spot: full-CG cars; full-CG dynamics; full-CG tracks; a lot of clean-up and footage matching; a lot of greenscreen; live-action plates; stock footage integration – it runs the whole range of VFX. It came together well – it’s a really satisfying piece. I’m pleased with it.”

Press says the production was a very positive experience for everyone involved. “It is really sort of an iconic Coca-Cola spot, with ‘I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.’ They haven’t brought that theme back for some time.

“It was a really smooth production, it went really well. The agency was very happy. It was smooth for them as well — we were always right behind them, providing for them. A really positive experience.”

The spot was directed by Mike Long for Epoch Films; and edited by Matthew Hilbert of Joint Editorial House, Portland.

More info: “Coca-Cola Harmony – Behind The Scenes With The New Ad” on the Coca-Cola Conversations blog; Coca-Cola “Harmony” on Youtube; Coca-Cola “Hilltop” on Youtube.

Mad Men, AMC’s award-winning drama, finished its third season in November, and has been renewed for a fourth. Set in the 1960s at the fictional Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce advertising agency on Madison Avenue in New York City, Mad Men centers on creative director Don Draper (Jon Hamm, The Day the Earth Stood Still), and those in his life in and out of the office; and depicts the changing social mores of 1960s America.

Mad Men has garnered critical acclaim, particularly for its historical authenticity and visual style, and has won nine Emmys and three Golden Globes. It is the first basic cable series to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series.

Zoic Studios provided visual effects for a number of shots in the third season, including a memorable dream sequence; plus a variety of so-called “invisible” effects, VFX which the audience is usually (and ideally) unaware are VFX.

Zoic visual effects supervisor Curt Miller says most of Zoic’s work on Mad Men enhanced or augmented the efforts of production designer Dan Bishop (Big Love). Executive producer Scott Hornbacher (The Sopranos) and creator Matt Weiner (The Sopranos, Andy Richter Controls the Universe) are committed to staying true to the 1960s period, right down to minor background details. The level of detail is “amazing,” Miller says, and Zoic is “honored and flattered that they trust us to be a part of their team.”

Visual effects producer Christopher M. Wright agrees that authenticity and detail are vital to Weiner and Hornbacher’s vision. “It is nice to work with a client that’s very particular about their level of detail and their level of quality,” Wright says. “It certainly pushes us to make sure things are right. I have never worked with anyone quite as committed to staying true to the art direction of the time as they are.”

Still taken from Mad Men provided through the courtesy of Lionsgate.

For the third season premiere, Zoic performed a set extension for a scene in which Don Draper (Hamm) and Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt, Funny People) take a business trip on a Boeing 707 jetliner to Baltimore. The production built a portion of the airplane interior, which had to be duplicated and extended to recreate the complete interior of the passenger cabin.

Zoic artists visited the only vintage Boeing 707 within driving range – the former Air Force One on display at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Center for Public Affairs in Simi Valley, California. The Library does not normally allow photographs to be taken inside the plane, but the production obtained special permission to take reference photos one morning before the public was admitted.

A set piece making up the left half (facing the cockpit) of the plane interior, four rows deep, was built – this was shot from a variety of angles, with extras in period costume filling the seats. Then the set piece was flipped around and shot from the other direction, to become the right side of the plane. These elements were stacked one behind the other to create the complete jetliner interior. The main action between the two leads took place on the practical set, while the rest was assembled, composited and rendered digitally.

After the footage was shot, the production discovered that the carpeting on the set was inaccurate for the period, and Zoic fixed the problem digitally. The upholstery, wallpaper, and every other interior feature had to be recreated and rendered faithfully. Mad Men art director Chris Brown and producer Blake McCormick conducted research to guarantee authenticity. Zoic’s Renaud Talon did much of the work on the sequence.

Still taken from Mad Men provided through the courtesy of Lionsgate.

In another scene with effects produced by Zoic, a train ride through New York in the fall was created. The attention to detail was meticulous, with digital recreations of passing scenery true to the location, the period, and the season. Like all other work done for the show, the scene had to match Mad Men’s justifiably famous visual style. Zoic’s Suzette Barnett worked on the composites.

In a well-known scene, Zoic’s work was not at all invisible. When Don’s wife Betty Draper (January Jones, Pirate Radio) is knocked out with anesthetic during childbirth, she experiences a surreal hallucination.

Still taken from Mad Men provided through the courtesy of Lionsgate.

Jones was shot against a bluescreen, rather than a greenscreen, because it was easier to pull key off of her blonde hair against blue. She walked on a treadmill on the stage, with the intention that she would be composited against a moving background. The background plates were shot at high speed so they could be slowed down to match the actor’s walking pattern, but matching her pace to the background proved difficult. It was decided to keep her movement slightly off-pace from the background, as this contributed nicely to the dreamlike quality of the scene.

“The only tricky part,” Wright says,” was that when she stopped walking, the treadmill still drifted a little. So we had to sort of match up our background to that movement, because in the camera it still looked like she was moving even though the background didn’t move. It looked like she just floated towards us, which was a little over-the-top for what they were going for.”

After Jones stops, a caterpillar enters the frame from above, moving down on a thread of silk. She catches the caterpillar and watches it wriggle on her hand. The caterpillar was created entirely in CG by Zoic as an original creation. Zoic’s Dayna Mauer and Rodrigo Dorsch contributed to the scene.

“It’s a great show to be working on,” Wright says. “It’s high-end stuff, it’s award-winning. Clearly, they are very particular and know exactly what they want. It can be challenging, because with television, there’s a lot of ‘it’s good enough,’ when we get through shots — but with Mad Men it needs to be right.”

More info: Mad Men on AMC, Amazon; AMC’s Mad Men blog.

Zoic Studios would like to congratulate Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros and Matt Aitken for their Academy Award nomination for Visual Effects for District 9.

Zoic is proud to have been a part of creating this groundbreaking and award-winning feature film.

We also offer our congratulations to the Neill Blomkamp and the filmmakers on their three additional nominations, including Best Picture, Film Editing and Writing (Adapted Screenplay).

More info: District 9 web site; Amazon.com.

To the opening riffs of Metallica’s “Master of Puppets,” two NASCAR drivers jostle for position at the front of the pack. One cuts off the other by the wall, and the rear car speeds up, smashing into the front car. As the front car drifts from the wall, the rear car makes its move, attempting an aggressive pass on the right. But it’s no good – he sideswipes the front car and spins out. He’s slammed by another car and flips high into the air, triggering a massive pile-up. And straight through the smoke and chaos of the pileup – a third driver makes his move and takes the lead. “It’s anybody’s race.”

The 30-second spot for ESPN (see it here), promoting the NASCAR Nationwide series, was created by advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy New York and Culver City, California’s Zoic Studios. The commercial is significant because, despite its unique and stylized black-and-white look, it appears to have been shot in live action. In fact, it’s entirely CG.

Zoic co-founder Loni Peristere, who directed the spot, talks about why the commercial was created digitally, and how Zoic was able to create the illusion of perfect realism.

“The question from Wieden+Kennedy was, ‘we have a project, two scripts, which take place on the track, and would require significant action and stunt work. We’re trying to decide whether we should approach this from a live-action standpoint; or should we approach this from an animation standpoint.”

Wieden+Kennedy insisted the final product be photo-realistic; the agency did not want a commercial that looked like a video game.

But Wieden+Kennedy was insistent that the final product must appear perfectly photo-realistic. Peristere says the agency did not want a commercial that looked like a video game. “It was really important to them that it had the energy, grit and testosterone of the track. They were not interested in making a spot that didn’t have the reality of NASCAR.”

The agency was well aware how far CG realism has recently progressed. “Even in the last 12 months it has come a long way,” Peristere says. “With the advent of motion pictures like Avatar or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, we are seeing the potential for photo-real characters, photo-real environments, and photo-real action. But could we actually achieve that for a commercial, and could we afford it? What would the timeline be?

“We got boards for both spots, and it became readily apparent why they were even asking this question – they had a 40-car pileup in the middle of the first spot, and a pretty significant crash in the second. Now when you looked at the second spot, you thought ‘well, from a production standpoint you could probably pull that off’; in fact we’d done something similar for Budweiser the year before. But the 40-car pileup featured just an enormous amount of damage to an enormous number of vehicles, which from a production standpoint would be very expensive.

“And the ability to control the lighting and the camera and the art direction would be limited in a live action production. You would be fighting against the sun, making you rush through the shots, allowing you limited control over your color palette. And you would have the expense of wrecking an enormous number of vehicles.”

Peristere discussed the project with other principals at Zoic – fellow co-founder Chris Jones, commercial creative director Leslie Ekker, commercial executive producer Erik Press, and CG supervisor Andy Wilkoff. “We thought it would be fun to rise to the challenge,” Peristere says. “We knew the team we had been building over the last several years had the potential to do incredible photo-realistic work. We’d seen large leaps in the realm of photo-real characters. We came back to Wieden+Kennedy and said ‘yes, yes we can.’”

Deciding to do the spot in CG led to the first question – should the drivers’ faces be represented in the spot? Human characters are the most difficult thing to create realistically in CG. “From a directorial standpoint,” Peristere says, “I felt it was absolutely essential to see the drivers, to understand who they were, and to know what their motivations were so we had a personal connection to the race. I had the ever-present voice of [Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly series creator] Joss Whedon in my head, who says ‘it’s all about the story; it’s all about the people.’

“We enlisted the help of some incredibly talented artists, including Brad Hayes, Brian White, and Michael Cliett.” Hayes and White had worked at Digital Domain on Benjamin Button and more recently on Tron Legacy, and had been a part of the development of a character-based VFX pipeline.

The technique used for “Dominoes” involved projecting the actual NASCAR drivers’ faces onto CG characters, allowing Peristere complete control over movement and lighting while still getting full, photo-realistic facial performances.

“Andy [Wilkoff] and I went to the very last race at Daytona, and after race day we met with the eight stars of our two commercials. We ran them though some technical setups, which involved a three-camera shoot against a greenscreen. I directed them through a series of emotions and actions that related to the story we were telling. We then took those performances back to Zoic, made editorial selects based on those performances, and gave them to Brad and Andy and the smart people to make something cool with.”

Reference photos were used to recreate the track; and the sky was provided by Michael Curran, who produced a series of sky photos for use in video games.

Dmitri Gueer, founder and senior editor of Zoic Editorial, was involved in the “Dominoes” spot from the pre-viz stage through the final product. He describes the editorial process as “non-stop,” and uses the facial performances as an example of Editorial’s involvement at each step.

“The pre-viz had the drivers, but we didn’t see their faces,” Gueer explains. “So the drivers were just a placeholder in the cut. When we later got the driver plates, we started picking the selects and placing them in the cut. Since the pre-viz already existed, you needed to find takes that worked for the placeholders.

“When you have the drivers’ faces mapped in the shots, it becomes apparent when we need to give them a little bit more time, or take a little time from them, because something’s not working out; and once you have a set of almost-final shots, the edit takes on a different spin. You need to pick the sweetest spots in the shots; you need to reestablish the pacing; you need to make sure there’s continuity from shot to shot; and that the edit comes together not just as a story, but also that it gels with the music and is captivating to watch.”

“We had the added complexity of a 40-car pileup,” Peristere says, “which involved extensive damage to CG vehicles, but which had to happen organically. That was hand-developed and designed by Brian White, another Digital Domain veteran with an intimate knowledge of physics and kinetics, who was able to use both animation-by-hand and procedural techniques to bring these cars into collision. You’ll see that every vehicle reacts and behaves just as a real car would as it impacts. When we have our big moment where we t-bone the hero car, you actually see it break where it should break, and that’s because Brian White made it so.”

I was looking to invoke the German Expressionist period, so I wanted these incredibly long shadows, with crushed blacks.

The spot also required an enormous smoke simulation. “Whenever these cars spin they generate tons of smoke. We worked closely with Zoic Vancouver, and a number of technical directors up in that office who specialize in smoke; they did the phenomenal nuclear explosion scene in the forthcoming movie The Crazies, for which they developed a lot of the pipeline for this — which involves Maya fluid dynamics, along with some techniques in RF4 Real Flow — so they could generate authentic smoke elements that gave the illusion and sense of a full-scale car accident on a NASCAR track.

“Kevin Struckman, Mike Rhone, and Trevor Adams all put in an incredible number of hours to make these smoke simulations incredibly spectacular, concluding with the hero car penetrating the giant smoke cloud, creating those beautiful little vortices that you see. That’s something that’s pretty tricky in a fluid simulation, and they were able to do a really nice job with that.”

In order for the spot to come together organically, there was an immense amount of compositing. “We brought in real smoke, spark, and pyro elements to underline the CG elements. Also, every single one of the 27 shots in this 30-second spot had upwards of hundreds of passes– lighting, reflections, highlights, lens flares, vignettes, grain – all of this stuff that had to be added as a secondary layer.”

The spot was rendered in full color, but the end product was always intended to be in a highly-stylized black-and-white. “That was a choice we made with Wieden+Kennedy, to create a style, a more graphic look. For me it was heading towards the films Alfred Hitchcock made in the 40s and 50s, and looking back even further to F.W. Murnau and Sunrise, and Fritz Lang and Metropolis. I was looking to invoke the German Expressionist period, so I wanted these incredibly long shadows, with crushed blacks. You’ll see a low sun – I call that the Ridley Scott sun, because Ridley Scott shoots at the magic hour all the time, and we wanted to put that in every shot. You’ll see these incredibly long film-noir shadows with bright brights, and black blacks.

“Then we wanted to include the branding of Nationwide; so we applied the Nationwide presence as a design element. We had an illustrator, Eytan Zana, who did a phenomenal job setting the tone and palette.” Zana worked with Wieden+Kennedy, and with Derich Wittliff and Darrin Isono of Zoic’s design department, applying the Nationwide Pantone color to the stickers, the cars, and the track.

Peristere says, “I think overall, this black, white and blue we put together in the compositing really lends an original look to this spot that’s unlike anything we’ve seen before.”

Zoic VFX supervisor Steve Meyer handled the final finish, color grading and color treatment. “We wanted to have sort of a Raging Bull kind of look, high contrast black-and-white. So the compositors left things a little bit more on the flat side to give range; and then I took that, got the style Loni [Peristere] was looking for, and added some of those little nuances like the road rumble, the extra shake when something flies by camera, that kind of overall stuff.

“It’s a stylized look that you could attribute to real photography. I’ve been in the business for a bit, and it blows me away when I see it. Wow, that’s frickin’ all CG? It’s a very impressive spot. I was glad to be a part of it, because I think it’s going to have some legs.”

In the end, it was up to editor Gueer to assemble the finished shots into the final product. “It was a non-stop editorial process, from the beginning when Loni was assembling the story, to the time when we had all the final shots on the Flame. One of the things Steve [Meyer] did was add camera shakes to the shots, which made them look much better; but it changes the nature of what you’re seeing, even the slightest shake. You go well, wouldn’t it be better if we cut a few frames from this, or extended it by a few frames? When we had the final shots on the Flame, we literally did editorial on the Flame, making it better and better and tighter and tighter.”

“With this giant team of 40 some-odd people who worked on this spot, it’s certainly one of Zoic’s finest hours,” Peristere says, “and we’re incredibly proud to have put it together.”

People look at this spot and say “where did you guys shoot this?” Well, we didn’t shoot it!

Press is thankful to Wieden+Kennedy for trusting Zoic with the production of such an innovative and risk-taking spot. “They had faith in us and patience with us, and that was really great, because it really took that to produce this spot. It was a great experience on both sides. They gave us a lot of creative freedom, to really bring out the best in us. We pushed ourselves really hard to the level of realism and level of detail.

“I mean this kind of work, this animation, the quality level, is something very new for broadcast,” he says. “The extent to which we have gone to produce this spot in a visual style, in CG animation, has really never been done before. It’s a full 100% photo-real CG spot.

“NASCAR is very concerned about representing their world accurately, which was a big challenge for all of us, both from an agency side and a production side. Down to the decals on the cars, and the physics of the accidents, what would really get damaged and what wouldn’t, where would skid marks be made on the track… So people look at this spot and say ‘where did you guys shoot this?’ Well, we didn’t shoot it!

“The music was Metallica – my understanding is they’ve never licensed their music for broadcast commercials before. That was exciting from the get go — definitely a driving force creatively, no pun intended, the kind of energy that brings to the spot.”

Press says the spot has exceeded everyone’s expectations. “We’ve seen that response all the way around, from the agency, from our colleagues in the advertising world, and from ourselves as well – it’s really some of our best work. We’ve really set the bar anew; there’s a new target for us now, which is fantastic.”

More info: ESPN NASCAR “Dominoes” on Zoic Studios; Wieden+Kennedy.

Updated 2/5/09; new material here and here.