Summary
Blackberry 'My New BlackBerry' is about impossible scenarios that are made believable. Collaborating with director Peter Thwaites, the LA shoot was supervised by The Mill NY’s Executive Creative Director Angus Kneale. The spot was then graded at The Mill LA before The Mill NY office brought the VFX to life, with both teams working in tandem.
"One VFX highlight of this spot involved transforming a
jack-knifing truck rushing toward stranded pedestrians into
thousands of rubber duckies. Mill 3D Lead Artist, Ajit Menon said,
"The challenge was not just to envision what these ducks would look
like, but also to imagine what would happen if the inertia and the
protective shell of the truck suddenly disappeared to send the
ducks hurtling toward the pedestrians."
Head of 2D, Gavin Wellsman, added, "The most challenging part of
the job in preparation for the shoot was the fire sequence - the
way in which we filmed the elements was technically perfect." He
explained, "The special effects crew built a gas controlled
mannequin in black that we matched with the angles for our head and
chest flames for our medium shot. For our wide shot, our stunt team
gave us great flame elements of separate human arms and legs on
fire walking for us to wrap around our Hero character. It is this
interaction of flames around these boday parts that really helped
us to make the sequence interesting. We kept the flames over
cranked at 48fps to give the look of the fire a slightly more
hyper-real and graceful characteristic."
"Another scenario involved the main character suddenly acquiring
elephant limbs which with to stomp around the scene, creating a
moment of chaos," said Menon. "The realism of this visualization
was increased by giving the elephant a skin dynamic sliding to
"roll" over the bones. Adding dust, debris and cracking pavement
further reflected the mayhem around."
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