Shark Week - Discovery Channel

The Studio has worked again with Ceri Payne to produce a wonderful piece of creative for Discovery Channel’s ‘Shark Week’. The Promo idea was to create sharks swimming around a living room floor with just the fins showing. They had to dive, circle and create formations throughout the promo as the couple watching TV seems oblivious to what’s going on. In fact the only thing that notices is the dog who makes a ‘shark’ exit!
The whole promo had to be created in just over 1 week which meant the team had to work on R&D for the fins and displacement in just a matter of days. Studio CD Dan Andrew worked closely with Ceri during this process, Silvia Casali senior CG artist led the R&D as well as creating the initial
pre-shoot animatic. She managed to workout a technique for the displacement of the wooden floor which would allow the fins to move seamlessly through the boards and that would keep the project on schedule.
As this process was happening the fins were being modelled and textured and the live action shoot was being filmed simultaneously with The Studio offering VFX supervision.
As soon as the offline was completed the team immediately started 3D tracking all of the shots so the animation could be signed off. There was clean up be done on most shots as well as an extensive camera move and set extension required for the endshot and set re-projection for various foreground elements and floor planes. The VFX team also created a contra zoom for the dog shot which couldn’t be achieved on the day.
The Grade was done by Smoke & Mirrors Mark Horrobin.
The Promo airs in July.
Client - Discovery Creative UK
Creative Director - Lee Healy
Director - Ceri Payne
Head of Production - Steve Shannon
Producer - David Smith
Post Production - The Studio@Smoke-mirrors
CG - Silvia Casali / Nicola Destefanis / Gabriel Thomas / Gasta
VFX Supervision - Guillaume Weiss / Dan Andrew
Nuke - Guillaume Weiss / Dan Andrew /
Matte Painting - Charlie Lougheed
Grade - Mark Horrobin
Post Producer - Krystle Timm