Paying homage to ‘Flashdance’ on Paramount Mountain

A storm is brewing on Paramount Mountain – and it sounds an awful lot like… the Flashdance soundtrack.

Continuing our collaboration with director David Shane at O Positive Films and agency Droga5, our team lent their VFX chops to help craft the next installment in Paramount+’s “Paramount Mountain” campaign. The spot sees an array of characters paying homage to the iconic water bucket scene from the classic film Flashdance. Rather this time, the bucket is larger-than-life.

VFX Supervisor and 2D Lead Kshitij Khanna shares that: “The spot was shot across 5 days in LA on a sound stage due to talent availability. Each talent in the spot was shot separately on different days at different times. This meant that a good amount of homework had to be done in planning out the set build, the camera moves, and positioning of each talent to ensure the eye lines matched and they could be assembled back into an environment seamlessly in post. We worked closely with Director David Shane, the Cinematographer, and production designer before the shoot and provided 3D sculpts of the environment that they used to build an immediate practical set for the talent to sit/walk and interact on.”

James Mulholland, VFX Supervisor and 3D Lead discussed the CG approach the team took: “We had a mountain of fun with this spot. It was great to work with director David Shane and the team at Droga5 again. The script was the most off the wall of the Paramount+ scripts to date and definitely one of the funniest. The actors and puppet were all shot on bluescreen so that gave us plenty of things to work on in CG, from the environment build to the cloud FX, to the simulated water and bucket… and of course Bumblebee. I haven’t seen a Transformer strike a pose quite like this and we had a lot of laughs seeing the various poses our animator, Navi tried out before settling on the final animation. The ridiculously large bucket killing Kenny at the end was a hilarious crescendo to the comedy. ‘Oh my god, we killed Kenny!'”

“Each shot required a set extension and an environment build which was achieved with a combination of CG and Digital Matte Painting. The spot pays a beautiful homage to the Flashdance movie and we had to play with the look of what that would feel like if it were to be set in this realistic environment. The end result is a beautifully funny spot that sets a CG-crafted Bumblebee into a scene with a tiny chair and getting splashed with water from a 15-foot tall bucket while trying to look outrageously seductive. A visual that’s hard to imagine until you actually see it,” Kshitij adds.

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