I Design Your Eyes » Erik Press http://idesignyoureyes.com Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:54:31 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 January Playlist of the Month: Press Play http://idesignyoureyes.com/2011/01/14/january-playlist-of-the-month-press-play/ http://idesignyoureyes.com/2011/01/14/january-playlist-of-the-month-press-play/#comments Fri, 14 Jan 2011 21:52:17 +0000 ErikPress http://idesignyoureyes.com/?p=2494 The January playlist is brought to you by Erik Press, Executive Producer of Commercials:

Press Play – Erik Press’ Music Mix

In 1979, my father, a lifelong record salesman whose heyday was filling up the bins of record stores on the Eastern Seaboard with Elvis Presley albums, decided to get out of wholesale and open his own record store. It was here, at the impressionable age of 13 that my horizons in music, and all that music brings, really was born.

Across the river from the “Great White Shore” as it was sometimes called, the record store was located in a retail space of an urban, downtown mall and the clientele, were a rainbow of colors most of my peers had only read about in social studies. Each Saturday and longer stretches as I got older, I’d stand behind the counter ringing up purchases at the register and walking the floors flipping through bins of LP’s (yes LP’s) helping customers find the artist or song that they were looking for and often suggesting they try something new.

The mix of musical tastes was eclectic and soon I was listening to opinions, debate, theory, politics and history all through the music of the people who walked through those doors. Some of the music on this list is decades old and some of it, more recent. All of it, inspired from the time I spent behind the counter and walking those floors.

“The Bottle” – Gil Scott Heron and Brian Jackson –from the album – Winter in America

You might know Gil Scott for the Untelevised Revolution he spoke of but the depth of his music goes to the heart and soul of the street. Heron it could be argued was the granddaddy of rap. His rap, like some 70’s Afro Beat Poet, were being laid to vinyl as early as the beginning of the same decade and were tough hard looks at racism and the black experience in America. Like many themes in his music, Heron spent a lifetime struggling with substance abuse but has always triumphed by speaking truth to power and never running from the powers that be.

“Model Trane – The Turtle Island Quartet plays John Coltrane

John Coltrane’s Jazz is for many, out there. It was part of his signature and his gift to jazz. As an innovator, he truly pushed the genre into new directions, but for many, it’s often just too far out. Here, a quartet of strings translates a track from what is probably Coltrane’s most significant work, “A Love Supreme”, into a beautiful and creative rendition and homage. The first time I heard these guys, I was amazed. The quartets creativity is original in its approach and groundbreaking in it’s own way. If you don’t own any Coltrane, you should, and if you just don’t get him, at least get this album.

“Don’t Call Me Red” – Ry Cooder from the Album, Chavez Ravine

Part history lesson, part experimental Chicano jazz and part film Noir, this song is one chapter in Cooder’s musical work telling the story of the destruction of the Mexican American community that inhabited Chavez Ravine in the 1950’s. The song is something of a soundscape, a mood reflecting the McCarthyism that inhabited Los Angeles and views of immigration in America at the time. (Hmmmm. How much as really changed?)

Homeowners in the ravine were essentially forced to move out of the homes they owned and enticed with the promise of a return to a new low cost urban housing community and they would have first dibs. Ultimately, the LA City Council scrapped the planned community. It represented a communist way of life and Dodger Stadium was built instead. And of course, the people of Chavez Ravine lost their homes and their way of life.

If you consider yourself an Angelino or a Dodger fan, this album is a must and a cautionary tale to the value we put on community. After listening to this, Chavez Ravine has never been the same to me.

“Penguin In Bondage” – Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Live at the Roxy and Elsewhere.

No one does Rock n’ Roll absurd better than Zappa. The first time I heard this track, I freaked out! I had never heard anything like this before – especially if you continue on to the next three tracks… and then the whole album. Whoa man! This is THE best live Zappa Album in his catalogue, and the guy has had over 130 releases. It was the height of this bands foray into experimental rock. It was the early 70’s and the musicianship of the band was so on the money. Of course Zappa demanded this from his players and it is never more evident in a live performance this album. Imagine a dozen people on stage with guitars, percussion, horns, a xylophone and all the wackiness of a circus freak show… and ahhhh, the Zappa fuzz. This album is a must for any Zappa collection.

“Get Down Moses” – Joe Stummer and the Mescaleros

This is a thrilling cut from Joe’s best work after The Clash. With a sound of dread in the distance and the booming of biblical imagery, Stummer and his band weave together a warning of what consequences may come. This album is a must for anyone who’s ever liked a Clash song for sure. The energy, the politics, the attitude, the Rock – it’s all Strummer. If this guy were still making music, whoa! He was a constantly evolving artist on an upward, creative trajectory. RIP Joe, you were a true original.

“All Night Long” – Clifton Chenier and his Red Hot Louisiana Band

I was first introduced to Zydeco and Cajun music by the young manager of my father’s record store, a sort of older brother to me. He introduced me to a lot of things music. I had heard the blues before and knew of what it meant to the South but it was nothing like this. An accordion just rockin’ out! I was hooked on the Bayou. A true Louisiana Creole, Chenier brought an infectious style to this original American genre with it some mainstream success. For his album, “I’m the Zydeco Man”, Chenier won a Grammy in 1987. This fast paced and bluesy music just makes you think of a crawfish boil and cold beer at a party on a hot summer’s evening. When I finally lived close enough for a day’s drive to New Orleans, it became my honeymoon destination and after that my wife and I would even go out of our way on drives from Florida to points West just to get our favorite bowl of soul and gumbo.

“Caribou” – The Pixies

One day in 1987 I’m hanging out in my neighbor’s dorm room in Boston, admiring his massive stereo set up. Four massive speakers were placed strategically in each corner of the room and this guy I know comes in with a tape and says, “Hey, check this out! It’s a studio tape of my brother’s band”. So he puts it in the deck, turns the volume up fucking loud and presses play… I had never heard anything like this before! – And this is what you should do right now. Turn up the volume fucking loud and listen to Black Francis and the Pixies.

Liveleak.com

“Moanin’” – Charles Mingus

Growing up, Mingus’ mother only allowed church music in the house but as a young boy, he developed a love for jazz. He admired Ellington especially and played the double bass in high school quickly becoming quite brilliant at it. Early in his career he toured with Armstrong but it was really the entire band that became the instrument he was to master. His abilities as a composer of highly complex arrangements set him apart. He was innovative in setting up a framework for a band to play in and then create the space for what became known as collective improvisation. Easy for two skilled musicians to riff off each other but how about an18 piece band all at the same time! His music was red hot, like this track and so was his temper. He wanted nothing less than perfection from his players and this piece is smOkin’ hot!

“Death Toll Rise” – Light FM from the album, Let There Be Light FM

Despite the title, it actually sounds like a happy song. Musician, Josiah Mazzaschi makes dark themes sound so poppy. Playing nearly everything on this track and the entire album, Mazzaschi creates fabulous indie rock orchestration with catchy melodies that just stick in your head. I first saw Josiah play in 2009 at Spaceland in Sliverlake and was blown away, though he’s been around as Light FM for nearly a decade. If you like fuzzy electro-pop than be sure to pick up the album this cut is from, “Let There Be Light FM”. It don’t disappoint.
Death Toll Rise

“Dis Poem” (Reel Houze Da Rub) Mutabaruka from the album, King Size Dub Vol.6

This comes out of my love for Reggae and a Drum and Base phase I went through in the early 00’s. Mutabaruka’s poetry was originally recorded sans music. Here a German Dub team known as Reel Houze takes “Dis Poem”, a mystical, lyrical, chant and evolves it into an otherworldly trance. Definitely use this dose of dub with headphones “Cause dis poem and dis playlist, will be continued in your mind…”

]]> The January playlist is brought to you by Erik Press, Executive Producer of Commercials:

Press Play – Erik Press’ Music Mix

In 1979, my father, a lifelong record salesman whose heyday was filling up the bins of record stores on the Eastern Seaboard with Elvis Presley albums, decided to get out of wholesale and open his own record store. It was here, at the impressionable age of 13 that my horizons in music, and all that music brings, really was born.

Across the river from the “Great White Shore” as it was sometimes called, the record store was located in a retail space of an urban, downtown mall and the clientele, were a rainbow of colors most of my peers had only read about in social studies. Each Saturday and longer stretches as I got older, I’d stand behind the counter ringing up purchases at the register and walking the floors flipping through bins of LP’s (yes LP’s) helping customers find the artist or song that they were looking for and often suggesting they try something new.

The mix of musical tastes was eclectic and soon I was listening to opinions, debate, theory, politics and history all through the music of the people who walked through those doors. Some of the music on this list is decades old and some of it, more recent. All of it, inspired from the time I spent behind the counter and walking those floors.

“The Bottle” – Gil Scott Heron and Brian Jackson –from the album – Winter in America

You might know Gil Scott for the Untelevised Revolution he spoke of but the depth of his music goes to the heart and soul of the street. Heron it could be argued was the granddaddy of rap. His rap, like some 70’s Afro Beat Poet, were being laid to vinyl as early as the beginning of the same decade and were tough hard looks at racism and the black experience in America. Like many themes in his music, Heron spent a lifetime struggling with substance abuse but has always triumphed by speaking truth to power and never running from the powers that be.

“Model Trane – The Turtle Island Quartet plays John Coltrane

John Coltrane’s Jazz is for many, out there. It was part of his signature and his gift to jazz. As an innovator, he truly pushed the genre into new directions, but for many, it’s often just too far out. Here, a quartet of strings translates a track from what is probably Coltrane’s most significant work, “A Love Supreme”, into a beautiful and creative rendition and homage. The first time I heard these guys, I was amazed. The quartets creativity is original in its approach and groundbreaking in it’s own way. If you don’t own any Coltrane, you should, and if you just don’t get him, at least get this album.

“Don’t Call Me Red” – Ry Cooder from the Album, Chavez Ravine

Part history lesson, part experimental Chicano jazz and part film Noir, this song is one chapter in Cooder’s musical work telling the story of the destruction of the Mexican American community that inhabited Chavez Ravine in the 1950’s. The song is something of a soundscape, a mood reflecting the McCarthyism that inhabited Los Angeles and views of immigration in America at the time. (Hmmmm. How much as really changed?)

Homeowners in the ravine were essentially forced to move out of the homes they owned and enticed with the promise of a return to a new low cost urban housing community and they would have first dibs. Ultimately, the LA City Council scrapped the planned community. It represented a communist way of life and Dodger Stadium was built instead. And of course, the people of Chavez Ravine lost their homes and their way of life.

If you consider yourself an Angelino or a Dodger fan, this album is a must and a cautionary tale to the value we put on community. After listening to this, Chavez Ravine has never been the same to me.

“Penguin In Bondage” – Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Live at the Roxy and Elsewhere.

No one does Rock n’ Roll absurd better than Zappa. The first time I heard this track, I freaked out! I had never heard anything like this before – especially if you continue on to the next three tracks… and then the whole album. Whoa man! This is THE best live Zappa Album in his catalogue, and the guy has had over 130 releases. It was the height of this bands foray into experimental rock. It was the early 70’s and the musicianship of the band was so on the money. Of course Zappa demanded this from his players and it is never more evident in a live performance this album. Imagine a dozen people on stage with guitars, percussion, horns, a xylophone and all the wackiness of a circus freak show… and ahhhh, the Zappa fuzz. This album is a must for any Zappa collection.

“Get Down Moses” – Joe Stummer and the Mescaleros

This is a thrilling cut from Joe’s best work after The Clash. With a sound of dread in the distance and the booming of biblical imagery, Stummer and his band weave together a warning of what consequences may come. This album is a must for anyone who’s ever liked a Clash song for sure. The energy, the politics, the attitude, the Rock – it’s all Strummer. If this guy were still making music, whoa! He was a constantly evolving artist on an upward, creative trajectory. RIP Joe, you were a true original.

“All Night Long” – Clifton Chenier and his Red Hot Louisiana Band

I was first introduced to Zydeco and Cajun music by the young manager of my father’s record store, a sort of older brother to me. He introduced me to a lot of things music. I had heard the blues before and knew of what it meant to the South but it was nothing like this. An accordion just rockin’ out! I was hooked on the Bayou. A true Louisiana Creole, Chenier brought an infectious style to this original American genre with it some mainstream success. For his album, “I’m the Zydeco Man”, Chenier won a Grammy in 1987. This fast paced and bluesy music just makes you think of a crawfish boil and cold beer at a party on a hot summer’s evening. When I finally lived close enough for a day’s drive to New Orleans, it became my honeymoon destination and after that my wife and I would even go out of our way on drives from Florida to points West just to get our favorite bowl of soul and gumbo.

“Caribou” – The Pixies

One day in 1987 I’m hanging out in my neighbor’s dorm room in Boston, admiring his massive stereo set up. Four massive speakers were placed strategically in each corner of the room and this guy I know comes in with a tape and says, “Hey, check this out! It’s a studio tape of my brother’s band”. So he puts it in the deck, turns the volume up fucking loud and presses play… I had never heard anything like this before! – And this is what you should do right now. Turn up the volume fucking loud and listen to Black Francis and the Pixies.

Liveleak.com

“Moanin’” – Charles Mingus

Growing up, Mingus’ mother only allowed church music in the house but as a young boy, he developed a love for jazz. He admired Ellington especially and played the double bass in high school quickly becoming quite brilliant at it. Early in his career he toured with Armstrong but it was really the entire band that became the instrument he was to master. His abilities as a composer of highly complex arrangements set him apart. He was innovative in setting up a framework for a band to play in and then create the space for what became known as collective improvisation. Easy for two skilled musicians to riff off each other but how about an18 piece band all at the same time! His music was red hot, like this track and so was his temper. He wanted nothing less than perfection from his players and this piece is smOkin’ hot!

“Death Toll Rise” – Light FM from the album, Let There Be Light FM

Despite the title, it actually sounds like a happy song. Musician, Josiah Mazzaschi makes dark themes sound so poppy. Playing nearly everything on this track and the entire album, Mazzaschi creates fabulous indie rock orchestration with catchy melodies that just stick in your head. I first saw Josiah play in 2009 at Spaceland in Sliverlake and was blown away, though he’s been around as Light FM for nearly a decade. If you like fuzzy electro-pop than be sure to pick up the album this cut is from, “Let There Be Light FM”. It don’t disappoint.
Death Toll Rise

“Dis Poem” (Reel Houze Da Rub) Mutabaruka from the album, King Size Dub Vol.6

This comes out of my love for Reggae and a Drum and Base phase I went through in the early 00’s. Mutabaruka’s poetry was originally recorded sans music. Here a German Dub team known as Reel Houze takes “Dis Poem”, a mystical, lyrical, chant and evolves it into an otherworldly trance. Definitely use this dose of dub with headphones “Cause dis poem and dis playlist, will be continued in your mind…”

]]> http://idesignyoureyes.com/2011/01/14/january-playlist-of-the-month-press-play/feed/ 1 Zoic Studios Heads to the Big Apple http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/11/16/zoic-studios-heads-to-the-big-apple/ http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/11/16/zoic-studios-heads-to-the-big-apple/#comments Wed, 17 Nov 2010 02:39:29 +0000 Leslie Morgan http://idesignyoureyes.com/?p=2179 On November 11th 2010 Zoic Studios presented 3D Stereoscopy, a presentation about the ins and outs of 3D Stereoscopic production at the Crosby Street Hotel. Leslie Ekker, VFX Supervisor and Creative Director of Commercials at Zoic Studios, presented an informative and entertaining discussion on 3D Stereo in which close to one hundred people attended.



Erik Press, EP of Commercials for Zoic Studios says, “It is the topic of the day for our business. Hotter than the word ‘integrated,’ 3D Stereo is upon the advertisement business. It is estimated that by the end of 2010 there will be 1.5 million 3D capable TV’s in American homes. This parallels the trajectory of HD in a more condensed amount of time. This past year we have seen the World Cup broadcast in 3D Stereo with ESPN producing the first major study of broadcast viewership. The findings (acquired by ESPN) do show that the viewing experience was more ‘pleasurable’ in three dimensions. Now, Direct TV has committed to several Stereo channels in 2011 – 24/7 including Discovery which is sure to be thrilling.”

Press asks the question all of us seem to be asking, “Is 3D Stereo here to stay? This is the question upon us and our solution to this question is to educate. I am thrilled by the interest and response out there. From creatives and directors to producers and cost controllers, the appetite for information and knowledge is big. This is why Zoic has been traveling the country dialoguing about the technology and rapid growth of 3D production. The more knowledge we can pass along to our colleagues in the advertising and production communities, the quicker we can get to the work at hand which is to create quality Stereo content. It is quality that will produce sustainability. It is quality that will allow us to properly answer the question. It is our responsibility to be leaders in this way so that we can continue to evolve the medium.”

Ekker who was responsible for giving the presentation had a wonderful time sharing his rich knowledge of 3D, “It was such a pleasure being able to impart my insight of the 3D medium to those who are excited and eager to learn about it. By communicating this information with others, it makes quality 3D media possible. A deeper understanding of how and why it works, and how to work within the parameters of Stereo helps create the possibility for a powerful and magical 3D experience on the screen. It’s always wonderful working together with clients who are knowledgeable and it is my sincere hope that Zoic can work with them in the future.”

Finally, Loni Peristere Zoic Co-Founder and Executive Creative Director thought the evening was a great success, “As a member of the full house audience for Les Ekker’s intro to Stereo, I became lost and absorbed in his history and practice within the medium. His knowledge and dialogue on the subject answered and proposed questions about the future of production. It was truly inspiring, a very necessary dialogue among the industries best.”

Representatives from such agencies as BBDO, Young and Rubican, NY DDB, and Euro RSCG Worldwide to name a few were in attendance as well as various companies like Google and studios like NBC, BET and CBS were there to check out the presentation. For more information on 3D production and the future of 3D check out some of the past articles on the blog here:
3D is coming to a TV near you! and for further information go to Zoic Studios.

]]> On November 11th 2010 Zoic Studios presented 3D Stereoscopy, a presentation about the ins and outs of 3D Stereoscopic production at the Crosby Street Hotel. Leslie Ekker, VFX Supervisor and Creative Director of Commercials at Zoic Studios, presented an informative and entertaining discussion on 3D Stereo in which close to one hundred people attended.



Erik Press, EP of Commercials for Zoic Studios says, “It is the topic of the day for our business. Hotter than the word ‘integrated,’ 3D Stereo is upon the advertisement business. It is estimated that by the end of 2010 there will be 1.5 million 3D capable TV’s in American homes. This parallels the trajectory of HD in a more condensed amount of time. This past year we have seen the World Cup broadcast in 3D Stereo with ESPN producing the first major study of broadcast viewership. The findings (acquired by ESPN) do show that the viewing experience was more ‘pleasurable’ in three dimensions. Now, Direct TV has committed to several Stereo channels in 2011 – 24/7 including Discovery which is sure to be thrilling.”

Press asks the question all of us seem to be asking, “Is 3D Stereo here to stay? This is the question upon us and our solution to this question is to educate. I am thrilled by the interest and response out there. From creatives and directors to producers and cost controllers, the appetite for information and knowledge is big. This is why Zoic has been traveling the country dialoguing about the technology and rapid growth of 3D production. The more knowledge we can pass along to our colleagues in the advertising and production communities, the quicker we can get to the work at hand which is to create quality Stereo content. It is quality that will produce sustainability. It is quality that will allow us to properly answer the question. It is our responsibility to be leaders in this way so that we can continue to evolve the medium.”

Ekker who was responsible for giving the presentation had a wonderful time sharing his rich knowledge of 3D, “It was such a pleasure being able to impart my insight of the 3D medium to those who are excited and eager to learn about it. By communicating this information with others, it makes quality 3D media possible. A deeper understanding of how and why it works, and how to work within the parameters of Stereo helps create the possibility for a powerful and magical 3D experience on the screen. It’s always wonderful working together with clients who are knowledgeable and it is my sincere hope that Zoic can work with them in the future.”

Finally, Loni Peristere Zoic Co-Founder and Executive Creative Director thought the evening was a great success, “As a member of the full house audience for Les Ekker’s intro to Stereo, I became lost and absorbed in his history and practice within the medium. His knowledge and dialogue on the subject answered and proposed questions about the future of production. It was truly inspiring, a very necessary dialogue among the industries best.”

Representatives from such agencies as BBDO, Young and Rubican, NY DDB, and Euro RSCG Worldwide to name a few were in attendance as well as various companies like Google and studios like NBC, BET and CBS were there to check out the presentation. For more information on 3D production and the future of 3D check out some of the past articles on the blog here:
3D is coming to a TV near you! and for further information go to Zoic Studios.

]]> http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/11/16/zoic-studios-heads-to-the-big-apple/feed/ 1 Part of everything you touch: The Active part of Interactive http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/09/01/part-of-everything-you-touch-the-active-part-of-interactive/ http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/09/01/part-of-everything-you-touch-the-active-part-of-interactive/#comments Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:16:42 +0000 Leslie Morgan http://idesignyoureyes.com/?p=1566 Last week I was talking to Erik Press, Executive Producer of Commercials at Zoic Studios about the future of advertising. Erik has been working in commercials for over twenty years so has seen a great deal of changes in the advertising industry over that time. Erik considers himself, “an orchestrator of putting creative teams together … Essentially my job is to manage teams of producers and artists. I look outward to sales and client relations to foster those relationships as well as build new ones. connecting the right people together and figure out the cost implications of doing so. I engage people to dialogue about creative solutions inside and outside of Zoic Studios. It’s working with people, creating ideas and building something exciting.”

Prior to my obsession with the television show Mad Men, the world of advertising and marketing has always been fascinating to me. As a kid, I remember commercials that stuck with me to this day,


Mikey likes Life cereal:

An old woman asking, where is the beef for Wendy’s:

Madge dipping her hand in a small bowl of Palmolive:

And of course I know how to spell bologna because of Oscar Mayer:

However, the world of advertising has come a long way since then, so I wanted to pick Erik’s brain and find out where he felt the advertising industry was headed.

Press has seen his fair share of commercial production through the years and he says the economy has naturally affected the advertising industry. Whereas years ago budgets were larger and there was only one place to put a commercial, now budgets are smaller and there re multiple places where commercials are placed, “Budgets haven’t grown, but now you have three different places to put your campaign and now you have to split up you production money.”

Besides sheer economics, another shift is the use of an interactive component in campaigns. “The biggest shift in the last two years is what is driving the campaign. It used to be the broadcast driving the campaign and now the interactive and integrated components are on par with what is driving marketing and advertising in what we have been calling the ‘commercial’ world, at least in my perspective. There is becoming less of a barrier between commercial and interactive and there should be less of a distinction. I think there has to be a synergy amongst the different platforms and I don’t think we should call it just commercial production anymore or just interactive production, I think there is a larger picture.”

So what is the bigger picture for Erik? “You have interactive content that keeps people’s eyes on brands longer. They are exposed in different media outlets and platforms.” If that is the case, then what in Erik’s mind is the future? “I think the future of advertising and marketing is about lifestyle. It’s about the things we buy, the places we go, the environments that we live in, fully integrated into those pieces of our lives are marketing and advertising. Marketing and advertising naturally becomes a part of our everyday lives. It’s not just a television commercial or print ad anymore. It’s about intertwining brands in lifestyle and that is the biggest impact. It’s the Nike lifestyle or the Red Bull lifestyle; it’s literally what we surround ourselves with.”

There are interactive projects currently in the works for Zoic Studios. “There are a lot of projects that we are talking to agencies about that will have a large interactive component, everything from athletics to communication devices. We are talking to major brands about campaigns that the broadcast is inspired out of an interactive experience, it’s amazing stuff.” Erik sites Zoic’s involvement in Killzone 2 as an example of an interactive experience combined with a broadcast experience. “You can look at some of the game trailers. Killzone 2 for example is a broadcast spot, it’s a downloadable spot on the Playstation network and within that it is an engaging and interactive experience. You can drag a thirty second spot out to nine minutes by exploring different levels and facets of how that project was put together. That is a spot that is a great example of interactive.”

Does Erik see any challenges with this new interactive component in the advertising world? “The challenges are that the agencies are splintered. There are interactive people and there are broadcast people and it is a rare agency, in my experience, that completely melds the two together. I think that is changing. I see a lot of agency creatives and producers that are fully throwing themselves into the interactive because that’s where the growth is.”

Are we headed to a world like the one we saw in the movie Minority Report? “Yes it’s coming. Brands aren’t exclusively broadcasting anymore, they are narrowcasting, and they are targeting very specifically because they have all of this data of who you are as a consumer.”

In terms of interactive advertising has Erik seen anything as a consumer that has excited him? “Something I am really excited for is the new Arcade Fire interactive music video which is basically an interactive Google Earth experience.”

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

“It’s a personalized Google Earth experience where you type in an address and you zoom down to the street level you type in. The story is then told through both the music and on the personal address you typed in so every user experience is different based on a geo spatial location. Those kinds of things are exciting. We are looking at a campaign now that is an advertising campaign with a very similar idea. It’s inspiring.”

I agree with Erik it is inspiring. I don’t think Mikey, Madge or Don Draper ever anticipated being part of an advertising campaign that was personally geared toward them and definitely check out the Google Earth/ Arcade Fire experience above. It will seriously blow your mind!

]]> Last week I was talking to Erik Press, Executive Producer of Commercials at Zoic Studios about the future of advertising. Erik has been working in commercials for over twenty years so has seen a great deal of changes in the advertising industry over that time. Erik considers himself, “an orchestrator of putting creative teams together … Essentially my job is to manage teams of producers and artists. I look outward to sales and client relations to foster those relationships as well as build new ones. connecting the right people together and figure out the cost implications of doing so. I engage people to dialogue about creative solutions inside and outside of Zoic Studios. It’s working with people, creating ideas and building something exciting.”

Prior to my obsession with the television show Mad Men, the world of advertising and marketing has always been fascinating to me. As a kid, I remember commercials that stuck with me to this day,


Mikey likes Life cereal:

An old woman asking, where is the beef for Wendy’s:

Madge dipping her hand in a small bowl of Palmolive:

And of course I know how to spell bologna because of Oscar Mayer:

However, the world of advertising has come a long way since then, so I wanted to pick Erik’s brain and find out where he felt the advertising industry was headed.

Press has seen his fair share of commercial production through the years and he says the economy has naturally affected the advertising industry. Whereas years ago budgets were larger and there was only one place to put a commercial, now budgets are smaller and there re multiple places where commercials are placed, “Budgets haven’t grown, but now you have three different places to put your campaign and now you have to split up you production money.”

Besides sheer economics, another shift is the use of an interactive component in campaigns. “The biggest shift in the last two years is what is driving the campaign. It used to be the broadcast driving the campaign and now the interactive and integrated components are on par with what is driving marketing and advertising in what we have been calling the ‘commercial’ world, at least in my perspective. There is becoming less of a barrier between commercial and interactive and there should be less of a distinction. I think there has to be a synergy amongst the different platforms and I don’t think we should call it just commercial production anymore or just interactive production, I think there is a larger picture.”

So what is the bigger picture for Erik? “You have interactive content that keeps people’s eyes on brands longer. They are exposed in different media outlets and platforms.” If that is the case, then what in Erik’s mind is the future? “I think the future of advertising and marketing is about lifestyle. It’s about the things we buy, the places we go, the environments that we live in, fully integrated into those pieces of our lives are marketing and advertising. Marketing and advertising naturally becomes a part of our everyday lives. It’s not just a television commercial or print ad anymore. It’s about intertwining brands in lifestyle and that is the biggest impact. It’s the Nike lifestyle or the Red Bull lifestyle; it’s literally what we surround ourselves with.”

There are interactive projects currently in the works for Zoic Studios. “There are a lot of projects that we are talking to agencies about that will have a large interactive component, everything from athletics to communication devices. We are talking to major brands about campaigns that the broadcast is inspired out of an interactive experience, it’s amazing stuff.” Erik sites Zoic’s involvement in Killzone 2 as an example of an interactive experience combined with a broadcast experience. “You can look at some of the game trailers. Killzone 2 for example is a broadcast spot, it’s a downloadable spot on the Playstation network and within that it is an engaging and interactive experience. You can drag a thirty second spot out to nine minutes by exploring different levels and facets of how that project was put together. That is a spot that is a great example of interactive.”

Does Erik see any challenges with this new interactive component in the advertising world? “The challenges are that the agencies are splintered. There are interactive people and there are broadcast people and it is a rare agency, in my experience, that completely melds the two together. I think that is changing. I see a lot of agency creatives and producers that are fully throwing themselves into the interactive because that’s where the growth is.”

Are we headed to a world like the one we saw in the movie Minority Report? “Yes it’s coming. Brands aren’t exclusively broadcasting anymore, they are narrowcasting, and they are targeting very specifically because they have all of this data of who you are as a consumer.”

In terms of interactive advertising has Erik seen anything as a consumer that has excited him? “Something I am really excited for is the new Arcade Fire interactive music video which is basically an interactive Google Earth experience.”

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

“It’s a personalized Google Earth experience where you type in an address and you zoom down to the street level you type in. The story is then told through both the music and on the personal address you typed in so every user experience is different based on a geo spatial location. Those kinds of things are exciting. We are looking at a campaign now that is an advertising campaign with a very similar idea. It’s inspiring.”

I agree with Erik it is inspiring. I don’t think Mikey, Madge or Don Draper ever anticipated being part of an advertising campaign that was personally geared toward them and definitely check out the Google Earth/ Arcade Fire experience above. It will seriously blow your mind!

]]> http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/09/01/part-of-everything-you-touch-the-active-part-of-interactive/feed/ 0 Zoic Races Past ‘Dominoes’ Success with ESPN NASCAR ‘Variables’ http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/05/14/zoic-races-past-dominoes-success-with-espn-nascar-variables/ http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/05/14/zoic-races-past-dominoes-success-with-espn-nascar-variables/#comments Fri, 14 May 2010 20:36:28 +0000 Erik Even http://idesignyoureyes.com/?p=1195

In February, Zoic’s “Dominoes” spot for the NASCAR Nationwide Series broke new ground in computer graphics for television. (Read the story here.) Now the Culver City, California-based studio has produced the second spot in the series, which retains the visual style of “Dominoes” but is quite different in story and tone.

The new spot, entitled “Variables,” is the story of the things the drivers and pit crew can’t plan for during a race, according to Zoic executive creative director Loni Peristere, “and how those variables affect the outcome of the race – who’s going to win, who’s going to lose.”

Watch “Variables” on ZoicStudios.com

The origins of “Variables” go back to the beginnings of the campaign. “The Nationwide campaign is a series of commercials that were originally pitched and presented by [New York-based advertising agency] Wieden+Kennedy,” Peristere says, “that we at Zoic partnered on for the duration of the campaign. We started in the earlier part of November last year, with [Wieden+Kennedy producer] Dan Blaney, [art director] Cyrus Coulter, [writer] Luke Evans, and Heather Larimer, under the auspices of Stuart Jennings, our creative director from ESPN.”

“The good thing about Wieden+Kennedy is that the producer is looked at as a ‘third creative,’” says Blaney. “I have that point of view throughout the process. That’s important to me.”

“We worked with the Wieden+Kennedy team to come up with the look, tone and feel for not only the commercials but for the entire campaign,” Peristere says. “If you see the Nationwide footage on ESPN right now, you’ll see our style, the stark black & white with blue highlights, used throughout the promotional material in the campaign. We worked originally with [Zoic creative director] Derich Wittliff and Darrin Isono to create keyframes that became the foundation of the look, feel and tone of the entire campaign.”

Footage of the racers for both spots was shot on location in Florida at the close of last year’s Nationwide Series. “We picked up the actors the day after their very last race of the season,” Peristere says. “And Kyle Busch, the star of ‘Variables,’ had just won the championship. We got to play with him a little bit, and his cohorts, on the shoot day, which was really fun because they were coming off of a long night of revelry.

“A big part of the realism for the drivers’ performances was rooted in my direction on set, where we were walking these guys through the variations of their performances. We had them run through directions like, what do you say to your driver? How do you feel when someone is spinning out right in front of you? When your car is not functioning? How do you react? We went through a series of facial expressions, both passive and active in performance, to capture the fixes that we needed for the spot.

“Both Wieden+Kennedy, and Stuart and his entire team at ESPN, were incredibly gracious with their trust. When we got into Editorial, it allowed [Zoic senior editor] Dmitri Gueer and I to choose the facial expressions we felt would convey the story to the utmost.”

Gueer adds that when it came to choosing the drivers’ performances, “they had to be identical to what the drivers would do on a real racetrack. But the big challenge was that you could take a greenscreen of the driver’s performance, cut it into the offline and go: “This is going to work great!”  Then look at it in the dailies after it’s gone through CG and all of a sudden realize that it no longer works because it is a mapped image that lives in its own environment.

“I really wanted drivers’ performances to work because it is  always about never stopping to want something perfect,” Gueer continues, “so I think I drove our CG guys absolutely bonkers because I kept feeding them non-stop new drivers’ takes to run a test on. In the end I was extremely pleased with how the drivers’ shots worked out. Our CG artists did an amazing job!

I am pretty positive that any NASCAR fan could take a look at the spot now and say ‘that’s totally real, I’m right there with that driver.’”

Peristere points out the differences between the spots. “’Dominoes’ is about an event, this giant crash, and having the wherewithal within the context of a giant 40-car pileup to know how to navigate that destruction.

“‘Variables’ is really about the race; it’s about the nuances of the drivers themselves, and how they react to variables on the track they cannot foresee; and it’s these kinds of qualities that make them great drivers. ‘Variables’ takes place from the white flag to the chequered flag. It’s one lap that we’re examining in great detail.”

“I think the two spots are totally different,” says writer Evans. “‘Dominoes’ has that epic crash in bullet time, everything fades out, and comes back full speed at the end; you have that lull in the middle, that moment where you have to get you bearings. Whereas in ‘Variables’ it’s a storyline from beginning to end. Right away you have to be along for the ride, and follow these details that are happening to get the story.”

Peristere laughs that “Dmitri, our crazy editor, had a lot to construct here; because the storytelling in a 30-second spot, especially in the context of a race, is really hard to track — especially here where it’s not just one event, it’s an entire lap, and you have multiple events. There was a lot of pack in, and Dmitri did a phenomenal job.”

Gueer adds: “From an Editorial standpoint, this particular spot was not easy because you have three drivers, three storylines, and a race that is going on in the background – and everyone wants to win! It’s a lot of story for 27 seconds to tell.

“This spot took a long time to edit and put together because we had to figure out how to tell a credible story, true to the whole NASCAR experience. You start in your mind by shaping the story based on what shots you would use to highlight certain points in the timeline. On top of that you have to have shots that establish the drivers and their identities by what they do on the racetrack, and how they drive or what strategy they use. Plus you have the overall story of everyone else trying to catch up to those drivers and avoid the big tire blow-up. How are you going to do that in such a short period of time, from a storytelling and from an artistic standpoint?

“Working out the timing takes a long time, so does maintaining pacing while telling the story of the three drivers. It was a pretty difficult task. Just like anything else the story has its own arcs, its highs and lows, and all of it had to flow from one cut to another.”

Gueer says that “Variables” was a very “Editorial-driven” spot. “The editor goes to the dailies and makes suggestions and has some creative notes, which is nothing unusual; but I would say that ‘Variables’ consumed me entirely, because everything in this spot is working on a cut-to-cut basis, and certain story points had to be hit for the spot to work, even the placement of the cars and where they are at a particular point in the story. But with great creative direction from Loni, our VFX and CG leads, and our great clients at Wieden+Kennedy, we were able accomplish a spot that I believe we can all be proud of!”

In the wake of the collaboration between Zoic and Wieden+Kennedy on “Dominoes,” a great deal of trust developed between the two teams. “Walking them through the process and working with [Wieden+Kennedy] on the first go-round,” Peristere says, “we set up the parameters and the workflow by which they would understand the second go-round. Honestly it was a very quiet second round of work, where they were partners with us, but not too invasive because they had experienced the process the first time.”

“There was so much work on ‘Dominoes,’” art director Coulter explains, “dialing in everything, the look and feel of it, how the animation plays out; so with ‘Variables’ it was nice, we were able to plug that stuff in and just let the story play out. With ‘Dominoes’ we were down there at Zoic working tirelessly to make everything come together – but with ‘Variables’ we just plugged everything in and it was great.”

Zoic commercial executive producer Erik Press says “the trust continued to grow with Wieden. I think ultimately everybody walked away very happy with the results of some really intense work and some big creative challenges on the CG end. We had a great working relationship with Wieden once again on this. I’m happy that they looked to us to find some creative solutions. We can’t wait to do more work with them.”

“We would all like there to be more,” Peristere says, “ if not on this campaign, certainly with the creative team we work with at Wieden. It was an incredible experience to work with them.”

Blaney says, “We put ‘Dominoes’ on such a pedestal, that our first reaction of ‘Variables’ was positive, but it took us a while to feel really excited about it. But for me, now looking at the finished ‘Variables,’ I can honestly say it may be my preferred spot out of the campaign.

“The client completely loved the it. They were blown away by ‘Dominoes’ — I don’t think anyone expected the end result to be that impressive. They took a leap of faith, especially trying an animation style that’s definitely innovative and new. They put a lot of trust into Loni. It was a very successful campaign for everyone involved.”

“The Nationwide Series is kind of like the ‘minor leagues’ of NASCAR,” Coulter says. “They’re putting a ton of money and effort into their Sprint Cup coverage, and for the Nationwide series there’s just not as big an expectation. So I think it’s really nice we had a come-from-behind win on this, making ‘Dominoes’ and ‘Variables’ so awesome.

Zoic thanks: Michael Cliett, Brian White, Kevin Struckman, Chris Irving, Steve Meyer, Nate Overstrom, Chris Desantis, Chris Jones.

More info: “Zoic Brings Photo-real CG to Broadcast TV with ESPN NASCAR ‘Dominoes’” on IDYE; “Variables” and “Dominoes” on ZoicStudios.com.

]]>

In February, Zoic’s “Dominoes” spot for the NASCAR Nationwide Series broke new ground in computer graphics for television. (Read the story here.) Now the Culver City, California-based studio has produced the second spot in the series, which retains the visual style of “Dominoes” but is quite different in story and tone.

The new spot, entitled “Variables,” is the story of the things the drivers and pit crew can’t plan for during a race, according to Zoic executive creative director Loni Peristere, “and how those variables affect the outcome of the race – who’s going to win, who’s going to lose.”

Watch “Variables” on ZoicStudios.com

The origins of “Variables” go back to the beginnings of the campaign. “The Nationwide campaign is a series of commercials that were originally pitched and presented by [New York-based advertising agency] Wieden+Kennedy,” Peristere says, “that we at Zoic partnered on for the duration of the campaign. We started in the earlier part of November last year, with [Wieden+Kennedy producer] Dan Blaney, [art director] Cyrus Coulter, [writer] Luke Evans, and Heather Larimer, under the auspices of Stuart Jennings, our creative director from ESPN.”

“The good thing about Wieden+Kennedy is that the producer is looked at as a ‘third creative,’” says Blaney. “I have that point of view throughout the process. That’s important to me.”

“We worked with the Wieden+Kennedy team to come up with the look, tone and feel for not only the commercials but for the entire campaign,” Peristere says. “If you see the Nationwide footage on ESPN right now, you’ll see our style, the stark black & white with blue highlights, used throughout the promotional material in the campaign. We worked originally with [Zoic creative director] Derich Wittliff and Darrin Isono to create keyframes that became the foundation of the look, feel and tone of the entire campaign.”

Footage of the racers for both spots was shot on location in Florida at the close of last year’s Nationwide Series. “We picked up the actors the day after their very last race of the season,” Peristere says. “And Kyle Busch, the star of ‘Variables,’ had just won the championship. We got to play with him a little bit, and his cohorts, on the shoot day, which was really fun because they were coming off of a long night of revelry.

“A big part of the realism for the drivers’ performances was rooted in my direction on set, where we were walking these guys through the variations of their performances. We had them run through directions like, what do you say to your driver? How do you feel when someone is spinning out right in front of you? When your car is not functioning? How do you react? We went through a series of facial expressions, both passive and active in performance, to capture the fixes that we needed for the spot.

“Both Wieden+Kennedy, and Stuart and his entire team at ESPN, were incredibly gracious with their trust. When we got into Editorial, it allowed [Zoic senior editor] Dmitri Gueer and I to choose the facial expressions we felt would convey the story to the utmost.”

Gueer adds that when it came to choosing the drivers’ performances, “they had to be identical to what the drivers would do on a real racetrack. But the big challenge was that you could take a greenscreen of the driver’s performance, cut it into the offline and go: “This is going to work great!”  Then look at it in the dailies after it’s gone through CG and all of a sudden realize that it no longer works because it is a mapped image that lives in its own environment.

“I really wanted drivers’ performances to work because it is  always about never stopping to want something perfect,” Gueer continues, “so I think I drove our CG guys absolutely bonkers because I kept feeding them non-stop new drivers’ takes to run a test on. In the end I was extremely pleased with how the drivers’ shots worked out. Our CG artists did an amazing job!

I am pretty positive that any NASCAR fan could take a look at the spot now and say ‘that’s totally real, I’m right there with that driver.’”

Peristere points out the differences between the spots. “’Dominoes’ is about an event, this giant crash, and having the wherewithal within the context of a giant 40-car pileup to know how to navigate that destruction.

“‘Variables’ is really about the race; it’s about the nuances of the drivers themselves, and how they react to variables on the track they cannot foresee; and it’s these kinds of qualities that make them great drivers. ‘Variables’ takes place from the white flag to the chequered flag. It’s one lap that we’re examining in great detail.”

“I think the two spots are totally different,” says writer Evans. “‘Dominoes’ has that epic crash in bullet time, everything fades out, and comes back full speed at the end; you have that lull in the middle, that moment where you have to get you bearings. Whereas in ‘Variables’ it’s a storyline from beginning to end. Right away you have to be along for the ride, and follow these details that are happening to get the story.”

Peristere laughs that “Dmitri, our crazy editor, had a lot to construct here; because the storytelling in a 30-second spot, especially in the context of a race, is really hard to track — especially here where it’s not just one event, it’s an entire lap, and you have multiple events. There was a lot of pack in, and Dmitri did a phenomenal job.”

Gueer adds: “From an Editorial standpoint, this particular spot was not easy because you have three drivers, three storylines, and a race that is going on in the background – and everyone wants to win! It’s a lot of story for 27 seconds to tell.

“This spot took a long time to edit and put together because we had to figure out how to tell a credible story, true to the whole NASCAR experience. You start in your mind by shaping the story based on what shots you would use to highlight certain points in the timeline. On top of that you have to have shots that establish the drivers and their identities by what they do on the racetrack, and how they drive or what strategy they use. Plus you have the overall story of everyone else trying to catch up to those drivers and avoid the big tire blow-up. How are you going to do that in such a short period of time, from a storytelling and from an artistic standpoint?

“Working out the timing takes a long time, so does maintaining pacing while telling the story of the three drivers. It was a pretty difficult task. Just like anything else the story has its own arcs, its highs and lows, and all of it had to flow from one cut to another.”

Gueer says that “Variables” was a very “Editorial-driven” spot. “The editor goes to the dailies and makes suggestions and has some creative notes, which is nothing unusual; but I would say that ‘Variables’ consumed me entirely, because everything in this spot is working on a cut-to-cut basis, and certain story points had to be hit for the spot to work, even the placement of the cars and where they are at a particular point in the story. But with great creative direction from Loni, our VFX and CG leads, and our great clients at Wieden+Kennedy, we were able accomplish a spot that I believe we can all be proud of!”

In the wake of the collaboration between Zoic and Wieden+Kennedy on “Dominoes,” a great deal of trust developed between the two teams. “Walking them through the process and working with [Wieden+Kennedy] on the first go-round,” Peristere says, “we set up the parameters and the workflow by which they would understand the second go-round. Honestly it was a very quiet second round of work, where they were partners with us, but not too invasive because they had experienced the process the first time.”

“There was so much work on ‘Dominoes,’” art director Coulter explains, “dialing in everything, the look and feel of it, how the animation plays out; so with ‘Variables’ it was nice, we were able to plug that stuff in and just let the story play out. With ‘Dominoes’ we were down there at Zoic working tirelessly to make everything come together – but with ‘Variables’ we just plugged everything in and it was great.”

Zoic commercial executive producer Erik Press says “the trust continued to grow with Wieden. I think ultimately everybody walked away very happy with the results of some really intense work and some big creative challenges on the CG end. We had a great working relationship with Wieden once again on this. I’m happy that they looked to us to find some creative solutions. We can’t wait to do more work with them.”

“We would all like there to be more,” Peristere says, “ if not on this campaign, certainly with the creative team we work with at Wieden. It was an incredible experience to work with them.”

Blaney says, “We put ‘Dominoes’ on such a pedestal, that our first reaction of ‘Variables’ was positive, but it took us a while to feel really excited about it. But for me, now looking at the finished ‘Variables,’ I can honestly say it may be my preferred spot out of the campaign.

“The client completely loved the it. They were blown away by ‘Dominoes’ — I don’t think anyone expected the end result to be that impressive. They took a leap of faith, especially trying an animation style that’s definitely innovative and new. They put a lot of trust into Loni. It was a very successful campaign for everyone involved.”

“The Nationwide Series is kind of like the ‘minor leagues’ of NASCAR,” Coulter says. “They’re putting a ton of money and effort into their Sprint Cup coverage, and for the Nationwide series there’s just not as big an expectation. So I think it’s really nice we had a come-from-behind win on this, making ‘Dominoes’ and ‘Variables’ so awesome.

Zoic thanks: Michael Cliett, Brian White, Kevin Struckman, Chris Irving, Steve Meyer, Nate Overstrom, Chris Desantis, Chris Jones.

More info: “Zoic Brings Photo-real CG to Broadcast TV with ESPN NASCAR ‘Dominoes’” on IDYE; “Variables” and “Dominoes” on ZoicStudios.com.

]]> http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/05/14/zoic-races-past-dominoes-success-with-espn-nascar-variables/feed/ 0 Perfect “Harmony”: Zoic Creates VFX for Daytona 500 Coca-Cola NASCAR Spot http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/02/17/perfect-%e2%80%9charmony%e2%80%9d-zoic-creates-vfx-for-daytona-500-coca-cola-nascar-spot/ http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/02/17/perfect-%e2%80%9charmony%e2%80%9d-zoic-creates-vfx-for-daytona-500-coca-cola-nascar-spot/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:50:06 +0000 Erik Even http://idesignyoureyes.com/?p=812 zoic_cokenascar_1_630x354

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.”

zoic_cokenascar_2_630x354

“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.

zoic_cokenascar_3_630x354

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.

]]> zoic_cokenascar_1_630x354

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.”

zoic_cokenascar_2_630x354

“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.

zoic_cokenascar_3_630x354

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.

]]> http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/02/17/perfect-%e2%80%9charmony%e2%80%9d-zoic-creates-vfx-for-daytona-500-coca-cola-nascar-spot/feed/ 1 Zoic Brings Photo-real CG to Broadcast TV with ESPN NASCAR “Dominoes” http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/02/02/zoic-brings-photo-real-cg-to-broadcast-tv-with-espn-nascar-dominoes/ http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/02/02/zoic-brings-photo-real-cg-to-broadcast-tv-with-espn-nascar-dominoes/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:23:50 +0000 Erik Even http://idesignyoureyes.com/?p=757 ESPN NASCAR "Dominoes" spot

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.’”

ESPN NASCAR "Dominoes" spot

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.

nascardominoes3_630x354

“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.

nascarconcept_630x354

“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.

]]> ESPN NASCAR "Dominoes" spot

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.’”

ESPN NASCAR "Dominoes" spot

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.

nascardominoes3_630x354

“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.

nascarconcept_630x354

“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.

]]> http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/02/02/zoic-brings-photo-real-cg-to-broadcast-tv-with-espn-nascar-dominoes/feed/ 5 Halex GT, Holistic Marketing and the Future of Advertising http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/01/26/halex-gt-holistic-marketing-and-the-future-of-advertising/ http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/01/26/halex-gt-holistic-marketing-and-the-future-of-advertising/#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 02:20:50 +0000 Erik Even http://idesignyoureyes.com/?p=699 Halex GT robots in a cornfield

In the midst of a vast Midwestern corn field, a friendly yellow industrial robot is on the hunt. Searching between rows of tall, green stalks of healthy corn, the robot discovers its prey, a single weed — tiny and innocent, but if it spreads the entire crop is in danger. The robot strikes, ripping the offending plant from the ground with its steel fingers.  The corn is safe once again.

There aren’t really industrial robots prowling the cornfields of America. This is a 30-second commercial spot for Halex GT, a weed-control herbicide produced for corn farmers by Switzerland’s Syngenta AG.  The number of businesses that might use Halex is relatively small, compared to most commercial brands – but it’s a lucrative product, and Minneapolis-based creative agency Martin|Williams was tasked with reaching those consumers through a television spot and Internet advertising.

Culver City, California’s Zoic Studios created the spot, directed by co-founder Loni Peristere. But there’s more to the story. Zoic was able to use the original assets it created for the broadcast commercial to create web ads and interactive landing page components, providing the client with Internet content that was much higher in quality than that usually created for online, and at a considerable cost savings.

Zoic commercial creative director Leslie Ekker explains that from the outset the studio pitched the idea of a holistic approach: including the creation of interactive assets as part of the broadcast VFX pipeline. “It’s more and more the case lately when we’re doing commercials, we ask during the bidding, ‘are you interested in an online dimension to this work?’ And the word gets around the agency, and they realize, yes, we need to get these resources from the spot; we can build on this work, and expand on it without very much extra effort and expenditure.”

Creating the Commercial Spot


An embedded flash ad, containing elements
from the original television commercial.

The Halex commercial (see it here) came to Zoic on a short schedule and with a tight budget. “This job was awarded on a Wednesday,” Ekker says, “and we shot the following Monday, in Florida — after the production company found a location; the agency determined which robot they wanted to use; we sourced and acquired a robotic end effector; designed and machined the actual fingers; and worked out a way to puppeteer it live on-screen for the shoot. All of this in a very few days.

“In fact, regarding the end effector, we acquired the machine Sunday morning, and over breakfast I designed the fingers. During the day I supervised the machining of the fingers at a custom machine shop, while simultaneously running out with the live-action producer and getting a compressor and the air hardware, tools and supplies necessary to create all the physical effects. By 8:30 that evening we had a set of fingers for the machine, fully motivated and ready to go in the morning.

“It’s seldom that we do things with practical effects, but because of my background – I was a model maker for 20 years — it was not very challenging. The schedule is what was challenging. And that end effector is now being used in trade shows by the client, attached to an actual robot, performing weed-pulling demonstrations, live at their promotional booth at agricultural shows.”

The robot was this character, an iconic image they wanted to carry through all of the Halex branding.

Despite the fantasy aspect of the commercial, the spot required a high degree of technical accuracy, as far as the depiction of the product. “We learned a lot about farming on this job,” Ekker says. “The reason we went to Florida was we needed to show a certain height of corn, because this chemical is used on plants of a certain age. Also the fields there are very neat, very clean.”

The commercial had to be very accurate in its depiction of the cornfield, the plants themselves and how they grew, because the farmers to whom the spot was targeted would notice any inaccuracies. “Apart from those limitations,” Ekker says, “the client was wide open to creative suggestions. In fact Loni [Peristere], the director, had pretty much free reign with the storytelling.”

The practical effects in the spot are the end-effector and several attached hoses, and the actual weed that is grabbed by the end-effector. Ekker acted as puppeteer for the practical effect, operating the end-effector from the end of a pipe with counterweights attached to a pulley. “They changed the species of weed after we shot it,” Ekker admits, “but it passes well enough.”  Everything else in the spot – the yellow robots, the cornfield, the weed as it grows — is CG.

One of the creative challenges involved digitally reproducing a time-lapse effect, showing the CG corn moving in the breeze as the weather changed and the sun moved through the sky. “We developed some very effective ways to show the translucency of leaves,” Ekker explains, “since we’re seeing them primarily back-lit; and to show the kind of animation that people expect to see from time-lapse plant growth — that kind of nervous, random weaving action.

“The background plate was supposed to be time-lapse, but it was at a very specific angle. Rather than dedicate a digital video camera to this one shot all day, I took our digital still camera, with an intervalometer, and set it up in a 5-gallon bucket buried in a corn field adjacent to where we were shooting. I lined up a shot with a very wide-angle lens pointed up at the sky at an angle.

“I framed it in such a way that we could take those high-resolution frames, and move another frame inside of it with some added distortion to give it the look of a camera pan-and-tilt, so that we could have a feeling of craning down and tilting up as this weed grows in the foreground. The move was created in that larger plate, adding a certain amount of keystoning for lens distortion, and it felt very much like a 3D camera move in time lapse, which would have to be motion-controlled in a normal situation. Luckily, because it was such a macro shot, we could do it with a single frame and a single camera position.

“That proved to be quite successful; we got several hours of time-lapse out of the way, with very low impact on the production. I would just go out and occasionally monitor the camera, change the battery, and make sure everything was okay.”

The practical end effector designed by Les Ekker.The practical end effector designed by Les Ekker.

Dmitri Gueer, founder and senior editor of Zoic Editorial, discussed working on the spot. “The most exciting part was working together with our clients, Loni, Les, and Zoic CG artists on carefully crafting the story of the robot, by combining practical and CG elements.

“It was great to have Zoic CG artists working on the fly in conjunction with me, Loni and our clients to propel the editorial process along. It was literally like: ‘Guys, so here is a clean plate and the robot is supposed to do this and this.’ And 30 minutes later we would have a temp animation, with the robot comped into the plate. All we had to do after that is place it back in the cut to see if it works.

“There is nothing better than having a direct line of communication between your editor and the CG team!”

Creating the Interactive Experience

While Ekker and his team were shooting the spot, and designing and rendering the CG, Zoic Creative Director – Digital Strategy Jeff Suhy and his group coordinated the web banner and landing page campaigns in support of the Halex marketing campaign.

“Martin|Williams came to us to build on the development of the 30-second spot,” Suhy explains, “which involved creation of the online assets. We worked in partnership with Martin|Williams in creating some particularly interesting banners, and modeled the robot for those banners; and we created the landing page, an educational experience which conveyed the attributes of the Halex herbicide, how it’s beneficial and its advantages over the competitors.

“The robot was this character, an iconic image they wanted to carry through all of the Halex branding. We animated the robot doing various things — pulling weeds, knocking a tractor off the screen, and other things.

We’re not just envisioning effects… we’re talking about designing the architecture of a fully integrative experience.

“The pipeline here is at Zoic pretty good for this sort of thing, so there weren’t any real technical issues. Les [Ekker] and his team designed the actions, and we on the interactive side designed the experiential elements around that, and how they interacted with the navigation. It’s a pretty seamless experience and I think it worked out pretty well for the client.

“It was cost effective, because we already had the assets; we already had 90% of the heavy lifting done, to get those assets ready for the web.”

Ekker was impressed with the final products produced by Zoic’s interactive team. “We did these little mini-cuts of the spot, in frames that were 75×300 pixels, tall narrow slices of the image. We would just use the essential shots to tell the broad story, and do some close moves within those frames on the greater-sized hi-def shot frame; and we wound up with some very artistic, very effective little story moments that require very narrow bandwidth, so they’re easy to stream online. It proved to be a really clean, elegant way to reuse existing assets.

“We adapted those animations for the landing page, and created some very interesting little interactive demos, with mouse-overs, triggers and hold cycles at the end, so the robot wouldn’t just sit there idly. It would sort of look around and wait for what’s next. And we managed to get a lot of personality into the animation. It was a lot of fun. A very quick, very efficient project.”

Suhy says this kind of holistic marketing effort provides more than mere convenience for the client. “The techniques used to develop this character and to animate this asset would normally have been prohibitively expensive for such a niche marketing campaign. If it were not for the efficiencies of Zoic’s pipeline, this would be reserved only for large budget, big campaigns that could afford to invest the money.

“The real message here is that, even for something as niche as Halex, we can do something that’s really high-end CG.”

Holistic Marketing and the Future

Erik Press, Zoic executive producer, commercials, believes this kind of holistic marketing is the next step in the evolution of advertising. “It’s not just about broadcast anymore. Fewer and fewer eyes are remaining on what we all have known as standard broadcast television, and now they’re moving to the Internet, and that’s what the future is. Part of the conversation at the front of any job is, what are the plans for integrated content? Clients have been really warming to that.”

As Zoic has expanded from its roots as a VFX house, with its own editorial, design and interactive departments, it has been able to offer services that are more encompassing and can meet a wider variety of client needs. “I think people are waking up to the understanding, as we put out who we are at Zoic, that we are problem solvers and educators because of the depth of our resources. There’s a little spark going off in people minds now, and Halex was a great example. There was an ‘aha!’ moment for them, where they said ‘oh, you guys can do that?’

“We want to look at projects strategically. There’s a financial advantage to approaching projects at the outset, knowing the different kinds of media platforms we’ll be creating assets for. It’s a new paradigm in commercial production. We’re not just envisioning effects for a 30-second spot, it’s much bigger than that. We’re talking about designing the architecture of a fully integrative experience. That’s new advertising at its core – the experience.

“I think for us as a company, our goal is to be at the leading edge of that kind of creativity and technology. Zoic is poised so well to have a great comprehensive, strategic view of what it’s going to take to get there.”

More info: Syngenta Halex GT page; Martin|Williams web site.

]]> Halex GT robots in a cornfield

In the midst of a vast Midwestern corn field, a friendly yellow industrial robot is on the hunt. Searching between rows of tall, green stalks of healthy corn, the robot discovers its prey, a single weed — tiny and innocent, but if it spreads the entire crop is in danger. The robot strikes, ripping the offending plant from the ground with its steel fingers.  The corn is safe once again.

There aren’t really industrial robots prowling the cornfields of America. This is a 30-second commercial spot for Halex GT, a weed-control herbicide produced for corn farmers by Switzerland’s Syngenta AG.  The number of businesses that might use Halex is relatively small, compared to most commercial brands – but it’s a lucrative product, and Minneapolis-based creative agency Martin|Williams was tasked with reaching those consumers through a television spot and Internet advertising.

Culver City, California’s Zoic Studios created the spot, directed by co-founder Loni Peristere. But there’s more to the story. Zoic was able to use the original assets it created for the broadcast commercial to create web ads and interactive landing page components, providing the client with Internet content that was much higher in quality than that usually created for online, and at a considerable cost savings.

Zoic commercial creative director Leslie Ekker explains that from the outset the studio pitched the idea of a holistic approach: including the creation of interactive assets as part of the broadcast VFX pipeline. “It’s more and more the case lately when we’re doing commercials, we ask during the bidding, ‘are you interested in an online dimension to this work?’ And the word gets around the agency, and they realize, yes, we need to get these resources from the spot; we can build on this work, and expand on it without very much extra effort and expenditure.”

Creating the Commercial Spot


An embedded flash ad, containing elements
from the original television commercial.

The Halex commercial (see it here) came to Zoic on a short schedule and with a tight budget. “This job was awarded on a Wednesday,” Ekker says, “and we shot the following Monday, in Florida — after the production company found a location; the agency determined which robot they wanted to use; we sourced and acquired a robotic end effector; designed and machined the actual fingers; and worked out a way to puppeteer it live on-screen for the shoot. All of this in a very few days.

“In fact, regarding the end effector, we acquired the machine Sunday morning, and over breakfast I designed the fingers. During the day I supervised the machining of the fingers at a custom machine shop, while simultaneously running out with the live-action producer and getting a compressor and the air hardware, tools and supplies necessary to create all the physical effects. By 8:30 that evening we had a set of fingers for the machine, fully motivated and ready to go in the morning.

“It’s seldom that we do things with practical effects, but because of my background – I was a model maker for 20 years — it was not very challenging. The schedule is what was challenging. And that end effector is now being used in trade shows by the client, attached to an actual robot, performing weed-pulling demonstrations, live at their promotional booth at agricultural shows.”

The robot was this character, an iconic image they wanted to carry through all of the Halex branding.

Despite the fantasy aspect of the commercial, the spot required a high degree of technical accuracy, as far as the depiction of the product. “We learned a lot about farming on this job,” Ekker says. “The reason we went to Florida was we needed to show a certain height of corn, because this chemical is used on plants of a certain age. Also the fields there are very neat, very clean.”

The commercial had to be very accurate in its depiction of the cornfield, the plants themselves and how they grew, because the farmers to whom the spot was targeted would notice any inaccuracies. “Apart from those limitations,” Ekker says, “the client was wide open to creative suggestions. In fact Loni [Peristere], the director, had pretty much free reign with the storytelling.”

The practical effects in the spot are the end-effector and several attached hoses, and the actual weed that is grabbed by the end-effector. Ekker acted as puppeteer for the practical effect, operating the end-effector from the end of a pipe with counterweights attached to a pulley. “They changed the species of weed after we shot it,” Ekker admits, “but it passes well enough.”  Everything else in the spot – the yellow robots, the cornfield, the weed as it grows — is CG.

One of the creative challenges involved digitally reproducing a time-lapse effect, showing the CG corn moving in the breeze as the weather changed and the sun moved through the sky. “We developed some very effective ways to show the translucency of leaves,” Ekker explains, “since we’re seeing them primarily back-lit; and to show the kind of animation that people expect to see from time-lapse plant growth — that kind of nervous, random weaving action.

“The background plate was supposed to be time-lapse, but it was at a very specific angle. Rather than dedicate a digital video camera to this one shot all day, I took our digital still camera, with an intervalometer, and set it up in a 5-gallon bucket buried in a corn field adjacent to where we were shooting. I lined up a shot with a very wide-angle lens pointed up at the sky at an angle.

“I framed it in such a way that we could take those high-resolution frames, and move another frame inside of it with some added distortion to give it the look of a camera pan-and-tilt, so that we could have a feeling of craning down and tilting up as this weed grows in the foreground. The move was created in that larger plate, adding a certain amount of keystoning for lens distortion, and it felt very much like a 3D camera move in time lapse, which would have to be motion-controlled in a normal situation. Luckily, because it was such a macro shot, we could do it with a single frame and a single camera position.

“That proved to be quite successful; we got several hours of time-lapse out of the way, with very low impact on the production. I would just go out and occasionally monitor the camera, change the battery, and make sure everything was okay.”

The practical end effector designed by Les Ekker.The practical end effector designed by Les Ekker.

Dmitri Gueer, founder and senior editor of Zoic Editorial, discussed working on the spot. “The most exciting part was working together with our clients, Loni, Les, and Zoic CG artists on carefully crafting the story of the robot, by combining practical and CG elements.

“It was great to have Zoic CG artists working on the fly in conjunction with me, Loni and our clients to propel the editorial process along. It was literally like: ‘Guys, so here is a clean plate and the robot is supposed to do this and this.’ And 30 minutes later we would have a temp animation, with the robot comped into the plate. All we had to do after that is place it back in the cut to see if it works.

“There is nothing better than having a direct line of communication between your editor and the CG team!”

Creating the Interactive Experience

While Ekker and his team were shooting the spot, and designing and rendering the CG, Zoic Creative Director – Digital Strategy Jeff Suhy and his group coordinated the web banner and landing page campaigns in support of the Halex marketing campaign.

“Martin|Williams came to us to build on the development of the 30-second spot,” Suhy explains, “which involved creation of the online assets. We worked in partnership with Martin|Williams in creating some particularly interesting banners, and modeled the robot for those banners; and we created the landing page, an educational experience which conveyed the attributes of the Halex herbicide, how it’s beneficial and its advantages over the competitors.

“The robot was this character, an iconic image they wanted to carry through all of the Halex branding. We animated the robot doing various things — pulling weeds, knocking a tractor off the screen, and other things.

We’re not just envisioning effects… we’re talking about designing the architecture of a fully integrative experience.

“The pipeline here is at Zoic pretty good for this sort of thing, so there weren’t any real technical issues. Les [Ekker] and his team designed the actions, and we on the interactive side designed the experiential elements around that, and how they interacted with the navigation. It’s a pretty seamless experience and I think it worked out pretty well for the client.

“It was cost effective, because we already had the assets; we already had 90% of the heavy lifting done, to get those assets ready for the web.”

Ekker was impressed with the final products produced by Zoic’s interactive team. “We did these little mini-cuts of the spot, in frames that were 75×300 pixels, tall narrow slices of the image. We would just use the essential shots to tell the broad story, and do some close moves within those frames on the greater-sized hi-def shot frame; and we wound up with some very artistic, very effective little story moments that require very narrow bandwidth, so they’re easy to stream online. It proved to be a really clean, elegant way to reuse existing assets.

“We adapted those animations for the landing page, and created some very interesting little interactive demos, with mouse-overs, triggers and hold cycles at the end, so the robot wouldn’t just sit there idly. It would sort of look around and wait for what’s next. And we managed to get a lot of personality into the animation. It was a lot of fun. A very quick, very efficient project.”

Suhy says this kind of holistic marketing effort provides more than mere convenience for the client. “The techniques used to develop this character and to animate this asset would normally have been prohibitively expensive for such a niche marketing campaign. If it were not for the efficiencies of Zoic’s pipeline, this would be reserved only for large budget, big campaigns that could afford to invest the money.

“The real message here is that, even for something as niche as Halex, we can do something that’s really high-end CG.”

Holistic Marketing and the Future

Erik Press, Zoic executive producer, commercials, believes this kind of holistic marketing is the next step in the evolution of advertising. “It’s not just about broadcast anymore. Fewer and fewer eyes are remaining on what we all have known as standard broadcast television, and now they’re moving to the Internet, and that’s what the future is. Part of the conversation at the front of any job is, what are the plans for integrated content? Clients have been really warming to that.”

As Zoic has expanded from its roots as a VFX house, with its own editorial, design and interactive departments, it has been able to offer services that are more encompassing and can meet a wider variety of client needs. “I think people are waking up to the understanding, as we put out who we are at Zoic, that we are problem solvers and educators because of the depth of our resources. There’s a little spark going off in people minds now, and Halex was a great example. There was an ‘aha!’ moment for them, where they said ‘oh, you guys can do that?’

“We want to look at projects strategically. There’s a financial advantage to approaching projects at the outset, knowing the different kinds of media platforms we’ll be creating assets for. It’s a new paradigm in commercial production. We’re not just envisioning effects for a 30-second spot, it’s much bigger than that. We’re talking about designing the architecture of a fully integrative experience. That’s new advertising at its core – the experience.

“I think for us as a company, our goal is to be at the leading edge of that kind of creativity and technology. Zoic is poised so well to have a great comprehensive, strategic view of what it’s going to take to get there.”

More info: Syngenta Halex GT page; Martin|Williams web site.

]]> http://idesignyoureyes.com/2010/01/26/halex-gt-holistic-marketing-and-the-future-of-advertising/feed/ 1 Zoic Studios Puts ‘NFL on Fox’ Robot into James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ http://idesignyoureyes.com/2009/12/15/zoic-studios-puts-nfl-on-fox-robot-into-james-camerons-avatar/ http://idesignyoureyes.com/2009/12/15/zoic-studios-puts-nfl-on-fox-robot-into-james-camerons-avatar/#comments Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:46:22 +0000 Erik Even http://idesignyoureyes.com/?p=488 fox401_FRIDAY_00091

Last weekend, NFL on Fox aired a promotional clip for the upcoming James Cameron film Avatar, featuring effects work done by Zoic Studios. Zoic inserted NFL on Fox’s robot mascot, Cleatus, into a scene from Avatar, which also featured Fox NFL Sunday co-host Terry Bradshaw.

Zoic executive producer for commercials Erik Press explained that, in his experience, Fox seems to seek partnerships with various brands, including feature films, to enhance the NFL on Fox brand and the Cleatus character. When Fox Sports approached Fox Feature Marketing Division’s Mike Perman about an Avatar tie-in, he contacted Zoic based on the studio’s previous work on a Cleatus/Terminator Salvation tie-in.

fox401_FRIDAY_00096

fox401_FRIDAY_00132

New Zealand’s Weta Digital provided Zoic with back plates and necessary assets for the shots into which Cleatus would be composited. The work involving compositing Bradshaw into the RDA Combat Amp Suit was done by another vendor.

“The project came up pretty fast,” Press said. From the time the project came to Zoic, “we delivered two 10-second billboards inside of two weeks – animation, rendering, lighting, even editorial.”

fox403_FRIDAY_00036

fox403_FRIDAY_00101

“Weta was incredibly helpful,” Press added, “as was Mike Perman. We have a great, ongoing relationship with Fox, and we look forward to future projects.”

The 3D sci-fi epic Avatar, starring Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldaña and Michelle Rodriguez, opens tomorrow in the US. It is Cameron’s first major feature film since 1997’s Titanic.

]]> fox401_FRIDAY_00091

Last weekend, NFL on Fox aired a promotional clip for the upcoming James Cameron film Avatar, featuring effects work done by Zoic Studios. Zoic inserted NFL on Fox’s robot mascot, Cleatus, into a scene from Avatar, which also featured Fox NFL Sunday co-host Terry Bradshaw.

Zoic executive producer for commercials Erik Press explained that, in his experience, Fox seems to seek partnerships with various brands, including feature films, to enhance the NFL on Fox brand and the Cleatus character. When Fox Sports approached Fox Feature Marketing Division’s Mike Perman about an Avatar tie-in, he contacted Zoic based on the studio’s previous work on a Cleatus/Terminator Salvation tie-in.

fox401_FRIDAY_00096

fox401_FRIDAY_00132

New Zealand’s Weta Digital provided Zoic with back plates and necessary assets for the shots into which Cleatus would be composited. The work involving compositing Bradshaw into the RDA Combat Amp Suit was done by another vendor.

“The project came up pretty fast,” Press said. From the time the project came to Zoic, “we delivered two 10-second billboards inside of two weeks – animation, rendering, lighting, even editorial.”

fox403_FRIDAY_00036

fox403_FRIDAY_00101

“Weta was incredibly helpful,” Press added, “as was Mike Perman. We have a great, ongoing relationship with Fox, and we look forward to future projects.”

The 3D sci-fi epic Avatar, starring Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldaña and Michelle Rodriguez, opens tomorrow in the US. It is Cameron’s first major feature film since 1997’s Titanic.

]]> http://idesignyoureyes.com/2009/12/15/zoic-studios-puts-nfl-on-fox-robot-into-james-camerons-avatar/feed/ 1 Show & Tell: Brooke Brigham’s Custom Bike http://idesignyoureyes.com/2009/12/08/show-tell-brooke-brighams-custom-bike/ http://idesignyoureyes.com/2009/12/08/show-tell-brooke-brighams-custom-bike/#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:16:00 +0000 Erik Even http://idesignyoureyes.com/?p=433 brookebike_630x354

This is the first in a series presenting the personal art, crafts, projects and creative endeavors of people in the Zoic Studios community. If you’re a Zoic artist, freelancer or staffer, and want to share your creativity with the IDYE community, let me know!

Brooke Brigham, Zoic’s Scheduler, has built her first bicycle, from basic parts. She’s been tinkering with bikes for a while.

I built it from the ground up myself, so all the parts came from different places; the frame’s from Santa Cruz; the front rim is from Colorado; the seat and the handlebars are from New York via Japan. I built the whole thing myself so I’m just really proud of it. That’s what makes it cool – I used my hands.

It has no brakes, and Brooke uses the bike to commute to work. She says this isn’t a problem:

You usually skid — you use your feet and your legs to put pressure down on the pedals, and that‘ll usually lock up the back wheel a bit, because you’re locking up the crank and the cog. But I haven’t had any run-ins where I have to stop on a dime yet.

Brooke is particularly fond of “Bob’s” (that’s the bike’s name) color scheme (red, yellow and green), which is intentionally “Rasta,” although her friends call it the “Christmas Bike.”

Bicycles are extremely popular at Zoic. Many employees bike to work — Creative Director Jeff Suhy is an avid cyclist, and Executive Producer Erik Press participates in the Fireflies West charity ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

More info: Brooke at Halloween on Flickr.

]]> brookebike_630x354

This is the first in a series presenting the personal art, crafts, projects and creative endeavors of people in the Zoic Studios community. If you’re a Zoic artist, freelancer or staffer, and want to share your creativity with the IDYE community, let me know!

Brooke Brigham, Zoic’s Scheduler, has built her first bicycle, from basic parts. She’s been tinkering with bikes for a while.

I built it from the ground up myself, so all the parts came from different places; the frame’s from Santa Cruz; the front rim is from Colorado; the seat and the handlebars are from New York via Japan. I built the whole thing myself so I’m just really proud of it. That’s what makes it cool – I used my hands.

It has no brakes, and Brooke uses the bike to commute to work. She says this isn’t a problem:

You usually skid — you use your feet and your legs to put pressure down on the pedals, and that‘ll usually lock up the back wheel a bit, because you’re locking up the crank and the cog. But I haven’t had any run-ins where I have to stop on a dime yet.

Brooke is particularly fond of “Bob’s” (that’s the bike’s name) color scheme (red, yellow and green), which is intentionally “Rasta,” although her friends call it the “Christmas Bike.”

Bicycles are extremely popular at Zoic. Many employees bike to work — Creative Director Jeff Suhy is an avid cyclist, and Executive Producer Erik Press participates in the Fireflies West charity ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

More info: Brooke at Halloween on Flickr.

]]> http://idesignyoureyes.com/2009/12/08/show-tell-brooke-brighams-custom-bike/feed/ 2