TVC: Pitch, Treatment Doc, VFX Supervision, Design, Compositing (Flame)
For some shoot stills and animated GIFs, see work.scottgeersen.com/mcdonalds-fireworks
I was enlisted by Cutting Edge to work closely with VFX Supervisor Simon Maddison from early stages of pitch and treatment, through shoot and final post/delivery of these explosive 15s TVCs.
In between Flame time on other projects, and after several Skype sessions with the German Director, I wrote the treatment for Cutting Edge and Carnival. This included our own interpretations of the brief, detailed breakdowns and visual examples for each of our proposed shots for the 3 TVCs, suggestions for audio tracks (some of which were later used by Agency), and detailed the process and methodology that CE and myself would use.
Shot over 3 days at Carnival films with the Phantom Flex 4K and Red Epic Dragon, Simon and I collected a wide variety of plates and elements, most of these on greenscreen, that could be later manipulated to create a blah blah. Here, nothing is at it seems – the ball of frozen coke, for example, is 3 resin balls filmed multiple times with different layers of frosting! The chocolate sauce – well, industry secret.
Simon and I then created previs animations in 2D and 3D for each script, before I went on to some intensive comp manipulation for the Frozen Coke spot. The straw (shot on a 12mm snorkel for the Phantom!) and glass was completely rebuilt in Flame so a virtual camera could travel up the straw as the frozen ball was launched. Textures of frozen coke were projected onto geometry in Flame to create the illusion of 3D frozen coke at the base of the straw. Similarly, the glass in the first and final shots was projected onto geo to be able to generate camera moves that we couldn’t film on set, and to clean up the on-set product stand-ins.
The coke balls, shot at high frame rate on turntables over greenscreen, were stabilised, keyed, aligned, and then blended so that ice crystals “grew” over the surface as the ball spun towards camera. 3D particle sims courtesy of Simon were passed to Flame and replaced with sprites of the frozen balls, for more realistic dynamics.
Backgrounds were completely replaced and a frosty layering of dust and sparkle added in the distance. The coke explosions was part live-action and part 3D fluid sim.
Credits:
Agency: Leo Burnett Sydney • Director: Ronald Koetzier • Production Company: Carnival Films • VFX Supervisors: Simon Maddison, Scott Geersen • VFX, Compositing (Flame): Scott Geersen • Additional Comp: Carlo Monaghan • Edit: Jason Diffin • Colourist: Marcus Timpson • 3D: Erik Charlebois • Producers: Samantha Daley, Adrianna Spanon, Matt Daly