My playlist reflects my diverse interests and eclectic nature I guess. All of these tracks speak to my soul, even more than my mind and it makes me feel deeply connected to my ancient genetic pattern. African music has always been so attractive to me, and that’s part of the reason I started the Culver City Drum Circle.

African rhythms are such a part of our music. I hear the ancient traditional songs everywhere! “Art rock” appeals to the designer in me, and I especially love David Byrne, Brian Eno and Phillip Glass. It’s a trip to the sonic art museum for me. Beethoven’s 9th evokes the grand soaring rush of love. Love is a huge part of my life. We (my amazing partner Diane and I) strive to create it. We allow it into our loves and it grows every day. We hear that in this passionate piece.

My favorite version of Beethoven’s 9th was the first time the East German orchestra played with the West German orchestra. The combined orchestra’s temporarily re-named it “Ode to Freedom” instead of “Ode to Love,” which was it’s original title. I hope you like this mix, it’s pretty extreme!

Leslie

Ali’ Farka Toure’ & Ry Cooder: “AMANDRAI”
from Talking Timbuktu

Talking Heads: “MEMORIES CAN’T WAIT”, and “THE GREAT CURVE”

PHILLIP GLASS: “MISHIMA”

BEETHOVEN’S 9TH SYMPHONY: “ODE TO FREEDOM, BERNSTEIN IN BERLIN”

BRIAN ENO & DAVID BYRNE: MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS “HELP ME SOMEBODY”

I spoke to Leslie Ekker about what prompted the conversion.  “It started out as an exercise and a demonstration piece.  We finished the 30-second spot and it turned out really well so we decided to convert it to 3D.  The spot is CG so we knew we could get high quality.  We went through the process of converting it to 3D and it essentially turned into a cautionary tale.  We found out that certain kinds of shots just don’t work in Stereo, fast moving shots, shots with zooms or foreground objects that are out of focus, depth of field shots where you have lots of blur all generally don’t work in Stereo because the human eye doesn’t tolerate that kind of domination.  You’re ordering the viewer to focus their stereoscopic gaze on a certain point in space in the shot.  It’s one thing to present a composition that dictates where the audience looks; we do that routinely in 2D by lighting, rack focus, depth of field that kind of thing.  When you do that in Stereo you tell the viewer to focus closer than further, to ignore something in the foreground or to see things of a scale that doesn’t compute in Stereo.  It all comes back to viewer experience.  It’s like story.  If you have a shot that isn’t enhancing or supporting the story, it takes the viewer out of the story.  You’ve lost them.  So it’s important to make all the shots work so it doesn’t distract the audience from the story and the message.  You have to design your shots so they can work in Stereo comfortably for the audience.”

On the production side of things, how long will it take for productions to adopt 3D equipment in order to shoot in Stereo?  “That’s a good point.  The only camera systems available right now are twin camera systems with beam splitters or binocular side-by-side systems.  They are all prototypes.  There aren’t stock manufactured systems.  They are all bulky, heavy and complex.  You need a convergence puller as well as a focus puller so your crews are bigger.  Reloading film or digital media takes twice as long.  You have double the rate of camera failure; lenses themselves don’t match.  You can have ten different 50mm lenses to put on a cine camera and only two of them will match close enough to use for Stereo production because lens manufacturers never had to make them match.   It’s not so much the optical quality of each element in the lens; it is the mechanical function of it.  When you rack focus on a lens there is a slight focal length change with a very subtle directional change as well because they aren’t perfectly made.  If those variables don’t match from lens to lens you will find that your images won’t line up.  Image line up in a twin image stream is critical.  Lens manufacturers are struggling to come up with new manufacturing standards that will make their product much more uniform.  When we bring these image streams into our post – production process, we have to make sure they match.  If they don’t we have to be creative in how to make them match.  Any mismatching will cause eyestrain and again it all comes back to viewer experience.”

Ekker knew what the ideal shots were when producing a 3D spot, but the conversion of the Chevy Volt from 2D to 3D helped the team at Zoic learn more.  “We definitely learned more.  In the end some shots work exceptionally well and it was interesting to find out why they worked well.  It comes down to the fact that simpler cinematography and simpler editing works better in Stereo, you need deeper depth of field where everything is sharp.  We knew that, but we saw how they worked in a practical application in the animation of the shots.  The last sequence in the Chevy Volt spot is the car finally landing on the road and the camera pulling up and craning down.  You’re looking straight down at the freeway.  Normally in Stereo, the further away you are from a subject, the weaker the Stereo effect.  So what I had our animators do was widen the interocular distance as we went higher and higher and moved further from the freeway.  At the end of the spot we are at a 12-foot interocular and we are about 20 miles from the surface.  What happens to the viewer is the freeway system turns into a miniature and remains a miniature in Stereo.  So it is basically shrinking in size not distance because your eyes are widening and widening.  It’s all about the ratio of distance between the eyes and the distance to the subject.  There is a range that the brain is comfortable with and understands.  When that ratio is exceeded you lose your 3 dimensional analysis of the scene.  When it is exceeded in the foreground, it becomes straining to the eye and it no longer feels good.  For us, it was a very useful project and confirmed our approach.  One of the things I emphasize in my presentation was that once you become comfortable with the parameters and variables in Stereo shot creation you start to play with them.”

Zoic has been presenting their findings to various agencies around the country.  The next stop is New York City on November 11, 2010 with the Stereoscopy 3D presentation at the Crosby Street Hotel.  To RSVP for the event check out the site:
Stereoscopy Event

I would put the reels into the viewfinder and watch, as Mickey Mouse and Goofy seemed to come alive before my eyes.

As a child, I vaguely remember trying on the red and blue glasses for the first time and not understanding what the big deal was until I saw Jaws in 3D at the movie theater the next week; I still have a hard time seeing the shark exhibit at the aquarium.

At sixteen, I had the chance to go to Disney World and experience the Muppets in 3D, a mix of 3D and animatronics. Of course my most recent experience with 3D was seeing James Cameron’s AVATAR in the theater, as did about forty million others.

However, when I heard that soon we all could be watching 3D television shows and commercials from the comforts of our living rooms I wanted to find out when and how that was going to be possible. This isn’t your mom and dad’s 3D; this is the future!

Leslie Ekker, Creative Director and Visual Effects Supervisor of the Commercial division at Zoic Studios has been working with 3D technology for many years.  In fact, Ekker worked with James Cameron on Terminator 2 3D, the ride at Universal Studios.

Ekker worked as the model shop crew chief on the project and supervised the miniatures during the shoot.  With his vast knowledge and experience, Ekker alongside Steve Schofield, Executive Producer and Co-Founder of Zoic Studios, decided to begin a tour around the country to different commercial agencies to educate and inform them about the 3D process.

“There is very little knowledge about Stereo image presentation and Stereo production and we are trying to help educate agencies about what is involved in producing 3D commercials,” says Ekker.  In this first part of my series on 3D, I will give you the I Design Your Eyes readers a glimpse at how 3D technology works and how the commercial world is responding to the technology.

The nationwide tour began in Chicago a few weeks ago with a presentation given to Leo Burnette and Draft FC.  Then, it was onto Minneapolis with Fallon and Carmichael Lynch, then San Francisco with Goodby Silverstein & Partners and Venablesvon.

Zoic partnered with Executive Producer Jan Jacobsen and Director Roger Tonry, co-founders and partners of 3DFilmland.  The group brought a consumer 3D screen with them around the country. The group took the television on the plane and then proceeded to take it in taxis in the cities as they met with the various agencies. I kept thinking it would look something like this:

On November 11, 2010, Zoic takes the tour to NYC at the Crosby Street Hotel.  Doors open at 6:30pm and there will be presentations at 7:00pm and 8:30pm.

For someone like me who has no understanding of how the process of 3D works, I asked Ekker to go into greater detail about how the process of seeing 3D actually works.   “On most 3D or Stereoscopic screens, which is the proper term for it, there are two different systems to allow you to see Stereo on a screen.  What you need to do first to create a Stereo image is to isolate the right eyes image from the left eyes image.

Each eye sees a different image, which is displaced slightly.  This is the way human vision works with the innerocular distance, the distance between the eyes.  That separation can be achieved in a variety of ways, but the most common way is to have a pair of glasses called shutter glasses that alternate their transparency from the right eye to the left eye, right eye to the left eye etc.

They switch back and forth sixty times per second.  An infrared light beam sent from the monitor synchronizes them.  The monitor in synchrony with the glasses, displays the right eye image and the left eye image, right eye image, left eye image etc. on the screen so each eye sees only its designated image.  It’s a very clean way of displaying 3D and it’s considered the best way at the moment to see it with glasses.  The second method we use is polarized.

That is a system where the screen itself has very thin stripes of polarized filter over it that alternates A, B, A, B, one is right eye and one is left eye.  The image is then broken up into stripes that align with those filtered stripes on the surface of the screen so you now wear polarized glasses that block the image of the left eye from the right eye and reverse for the other eye.  That segregates the left eye and right eye and that image, that striped or interlaced image, is displayed at any frame rate.   That is a more straightforward system because you don’t have an infrared beam; you don’t have an electronic pair of glasses.  We used a JVC polarized monitor and it was a pretty discrete filtration where you don’t have a lot of crossover from right eye into left eye.   It was a very slight amount of bleed through the lenses.   That is why it is not considered as good a quality an image as shutter glasses. Shutter glasses completely block the left eyes image from the right eye and vice versa.  With polarized there is a very small amount of leakage because the filtration is not perfect, but it worked very well.  The down side of the polarized system also is you are essentially wearing sunglasses so you have to have a much brighter screen in order to achieve the same sense of brightness.  Your eyes do adjust, but when you get into dark detail it can be a little tricky at times.”

From my research everyone seems to be saying that 3D is the future.  I even talked about it in a post about NASA’s use of 3D in their government film projects, 3D The Final Frontier. However, if the future of 3D is now does that mean we all are going to run out and buy the 3D television sets coming out this Christmas?

That’s right, if for some reason you have been living under a rock, all the major brands will be selling 3D television sets just in time for the holiday season.  However, can even Santa afford the price tag?  Back in March Panasonic said it would be selling a 3D television package for $2899.99, 2499.95 for the TV, $399.95 for a Blu-Ray disc player and $149.95 for a pair of 3D glasses.  A study about consumer attitudes toward 3-D television found many who were less interested in the technology after they actually experienced it.  Still, 52 percent of consumers who tried out 3-D televisions said it was a better experience than they had expected, according to a study conducted by The Nielsen Co. for the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing.  The study was released on September 9, 2010, Concerns About 3D TV sets.  Ekker says, “This is an early adopter phase; early adopters of 3D are often gamers, people who are comfortable with new technology.  Many are the same people that bought hi def screens before there was hi def content available.  Now they are probably the ones buying 3D screens when there isn’t a lot of 3D content available yet.”   The big brands that you will be seeing pushing 3D television sets are JVC, SONY, Samsung, Panasonic and Phillips. All of these sets for now will rely on 3D glasses.  I wonder ultimately what will be the chicken and egg in this scenario?  Will consumers need to buy 3D television sets to then get companies to produce 3D content or will commercial and production companies need to create the content in order for consumer to begin buying the sets in order to consume it?  Ekker believes that consumers will have to buy the televisions in order to see more 3D content being produced.  “We will need to see some market penetration of these sets in order to stimulate commercial production.  We have cable stations coming out with Stereo versions of themselves like ESPN, Discovery Channel, Sky and others and they all need content.  However, there aren’t eyeballs for the content because the screens aren’t out there yet. They are coming and they are selling, but they aren’t being adopted too rapidly.  Mostly because we all went out and bought the fifty inch plasma screen for our living room 1 – 5 years ago so that will slow us down a bit.  In a way it is a healthy thing because the gradual adoption of a new technology like this will ensure that the standards will fall into place that there won’t be a systems war like Betamax situation. Also it will give all the production entities time to learn how to do it right.”

So how do you do it right?  That brings us back to the nationwide 3D tour.  The point was to break down the process from production through post for the agencies to have them better understand what the process entails.  Essentially in order to successfully produce a 3D spot you need to have a company behind it that knows and has experience in the technology from production through post. Ekker said that the agencies are really open to Stereo commercials, but there are challenges.  “The clients and the agencies often aren’t prepared for how expensive and time-consuming Stereo can be.  At the moment, and this is evolving as we speak, it is more expensive and takes longer depending on the content and what is desired.  There is a gap in knowledge at the agencies so when they see a job come in or request for a 3D spot they will send it out to the usual production companies and directors and they get back bids.   The trouble is that these production companies nearly always have no experience producing 3D work and that is an essential flaw in their system. That is one thing we are trying to make sure the agencies understand you need a company that has knowledge and experience in Stereo production from concept to delivery.  There are so many ways to get tripped up and I want them to understand those ways.”

The biggest way to get tripped up is simply the technology.

“The only camera systems available right now are twin camera systems with beam splitters or binocular side by side systems, and they are all prototypes.  There aren’t stock manufactured systems.  They are all bulky, heavy and complex. You need a convergence puller as well as a focus puller so your crews are bigger.  Reloading film or digital media takes twice as long. You have double the rate of camera failure; lenses themselves don’t match.  You can have ten different 50mm lenses to put on a cine camera and only two of them will match close enough to use for Stereo production because lens manufacturers never had to make them match.  Lens manufacturers are struggling to come up with new manufacturing standards that will make their product much more uniform.  When we bring these image streams into our post production process, we have to make sure they match.  If they don’t we have to be creative in how to make them match.   Any mismatching will cause eye strain and then it is about viewer experience.”  Obviously no one wants eye strain when viewing content.  Can you imagine watching a 3D commercial and then having to leave the room because you just got a headache?  I for one would not be happy about dropping a bunch of money on a television set to then only view content that caused me to pop an aspirin.

Based on the research it looks like 3D is happening whether you like it or not.   I am someone who is not an early adopter.  I still don’t own a Blu-Ray player, I held onto my dial up Internet as long as I could bare it, and I still would rather buy a CD rather than download music.  However, I am excited to see more 3D content.  Would I want to see the next World Cup games broadcast in 3D?  OF COURSE!  Would I want to buy a television to do that?  Probably not, but I would buy my friend’s beer and pay for a set of glasses to go watch the games on their television set because I know people who would buy a 3D television at Christmas.  All of this said, I ultimately agree with Leslie Ekker, gradual adoption ultimately means the standards can fall into place and there won’t be system wars; anyone remember HD DVD?  Well as of 2008 it was discontinued and Blu-Ray is now the standard.

Stay tuned for part two of this article where I talk about what happens when you convert 2D to 3D (I’ll give you a hint, it isn’t pretty!) and when you can expect to see your favorite cable networks expanding into more 3D content.

Last year Zoic Studios teamed up with Tarsem on the “Level Up or Die” spot for Mountain Dew and Ekker was the VFX Supervisor/ Creative Director on that spot as well.  Ekker and Tarsem had a good connection from the previous work they had done together.

“They were shooting when they called us and asked if we could help.  We didn’t have a supervisor on set, but I talked to the team to let them know what they would need to make their shots work. However, they were already well informed as Tarsem has extensive experience in visual effects.  He knows his stuff and he has always been really good about supporting visual effects in his work. Most of the work we did was replication of animals: chickens, deer, rabbits, baby ducks.  What they didn’t have was a butterfly.  They wanted us to animate a butterfly for the end of the spot.  They also wanted the eyes of three actors to reflect light when they turned around towards the camera in one shot, almost like an animal at night.”

Ekker actually took a tip from the film Blade Runner for the light reflection shot.  “We were referencing Blade Runner.  When Ridley Scott directed the film, he had a light source right next to the lens and bounced light out of the actor’s eyes. It was very subtle yet effective.  The visual effect takes place in the scene where there is a machine that can find out if you are a Replicant or not by examining your eye and how it responds to questions.  I was very familiar with that because I not only studied the film, but also worked on the movie so I knew exactly how it was done.  So we replicated that in how we set up the composite.  I had our compositor take the entire scene and reduce it in size to a postage stamp and blur it.  We used that image in the pupil of the actor’s eye.  We could move the image around and set in the place we needed it inside the eye.  That worked out really well because each eye is different and it’s very organic looking because we are using an organic source for the image.  We worked with the Head of Art at the Fallon Agency, Christy Peacock who worked with us creatively on the spot.”

With regards to the butterfly, Ekker had a butterfly image in mind that the agency ended up responding to, “I selected a photograph and proposed it as a texture map and the agency loved it.  We used that as a guide and set it up for animation.  We had Chris Barsamian who is a very talented animator at Zoic Studios do the animation for us and he did some great work.  We did about eighty different versions of animation and found the right animated piece that was the right compromise of naturalistic animation and expressive animation. The final step in the shot was to put a little powder on the window from the butterfly’s wings when it hits the glass.  To accomplish the look, I went into a dark storeroom and there was a monitor in there that I tipped up.  I took some chalk and shaved it with a knife, took a Kleenex from my pocket and made a V shape out of the chalk shavings onto the monitor.  I took a series of still photographs, making several different patterns out of the chalk.  I lit them with my LED flashlight and all of the photographs were taken with a long exposure.  In about twenty minutes I handed the elements over to Chris and they worked really well in the spot.”

The spot is highly stylized and was shot on the ARRI Flex Alexa digital camera.  “It has a very broad range of exposure latitude so it has a huge dynamic range; it has a 16 stop dynamic range and it looks like film.  It’s very low noise and has great detail of highlights, really nice shadow details and great color continuity through the tones.  It was really impressive and the first time I had worked with the camera as it is brand new.”

The spot for the Cosmopolitan is pretty hot and I for one am excited to check out the real deal when the hotel opens on December 15, 2010.  Check out the spot  below.

There is no need at this late date for a simple VFX blog to recount the recent events in the professional and private lives of golfer Tiger Woods. But as Woods attempts to resume his career, both as an athlete and as a corporate spokesperson, he and sponsor Nike, along with ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, production company Pretty Bird and Zoic Studios, have created a moving, personal and risky 30-second commercial spot. Zoic has worked with Wieden+Kennedy on several spots of late, particularly the ESPN NASCAR campaign out of New York, and Coke NASCAR and now Nike out of Portland.

The spot was unveiled April 7th, and discussion of the commercial has spread across the Internet and the media, as fans and pundits argue over how the spot will affect the career of the most famous golfer in history. Entitled “Earl and Tiger,” the spot features a close-up of Woods standing on a golf course, listening to words spoken by his late father Earl Woods, who passed away in 2006. The spot was shot on black & white film with a gritty realism, complete with dust, grain, developer streaks and an authentic roll-out at the end.

Zoic Studios’ creative director Les Ekker discusses Zoic’s involvement in the creation of the spot. “We were approached on a Tuesday for a bid,” Ekker says, “and I ended up flying out to Orlando that afternoon (in record time!).

“On Wednesday we spent the whole day rehearsing, because we would only have Tiger for one hour on Friday morning. The shot would be done with both a steadicam and a technocrane.” Max Malkin (Nailed) directed the spot, and acted as director of photography as well.

It was important that the spot convey authenticity and honesty, and visual effects were added enhance these qualities.

“On Friday, Tiger came in from 8-9 am. We used black & white stock, and switched at the last minute to one with a slower film speed and finer grain structure. It was important to the director that the spot convey authenticity and honesty, and visual effects were added in post to restore and enhance these qualities. In fact, the shot of Tiger that was eventually chosen for the final spot (in record time!) was the final roll-out take that didn’t even have the complete camera move that was rehearsed. But the director, Nike and Tiger himself loved it and felt this take best complemented the sincerity of the message.

“Tiger was shot against a white screen with tracking markers, to make things cleaner for roto. But the screen couldn’t completely cover the background because of the angle of the sun. We did a super-fast turnaround on the roto, and extracted a 3D track of the selected take (in record time!).

“We created a multi-plane background matte painting, inspired by the sliver of actual background glimpsed in the selected take. After the background design was approved (in record time!), we rendered the multi-plane to the camera. The matte painting included some subtle animation, like twinkling reflections on the water.

“The original negative had a lot of dirt and streaks in the white areas from the developer bath, and we reproduced these in the composite and matched the original grain quality. Then we added some sun glare over Tiger and degraded the image slightly, all of which were added to match the authenticity of the original film. This was done to support the goal of the spot, to create a sense of ‘powerful humble sincerity.’

“In the end, we turned around the spot in three days – the take was chosen on a Thursday, and we delivered the final spot the next Monday morning (in record time!).

“We worked very closely with the creative director, Hal Curtis, to ensure all of his detailed visual goals were achieved. Wieden+Kennedy, Joint Editorial and Zoic worked in tight coordination with a uniformly focused sense of purpose, and that made the job a real pleasure, despite having to do it ‘in record time!’”

The freelance VFX producer who was brought on to run the project, Karin Joy, has extensive feature film experience, most recently on The Forbidden Kingdom and Michael Jackson’s This Is It. Les worked with Joy at Boss Films in the late 1980s, and says it was fun to be reunited with her on this project.

Zoic Studios worked with the advertising agency, Wieden+Kennedy and Joint Editorial, and Ekker, along with Zoic commercial executive producer Erik Press, say that both firms were utterly professional, and dedicated to producing an important, meaningful and controversial spot that is of great importance to both Nike and to Tiger Woods.

More info: See the “Earl and Tiger” spot; Wieden+Kennedy; Pretty Bird; Joint Editorial; Les Ekker, Max Malkin, and Karin Joy on IMDb.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.