Erste Group Bank AG – Xmas Rodeo

Erste Group Bank, one of the largest financial services providers in Central and Eastern Europe, asked The Mill to create…
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Erste Group Bank AG "Xmas Rodeo"
Case Study

Erste Group Bank, one of the largest financial services providers in Central and Eastern Europe, asked The Mill to create a photorealistic rodeo Rudolph for their 2023 Christmas campaign.

Following his establishment as the next Christmas character in town, our photorealistic, CG reindeer had to be animated and rendered into shot plates. This was quite the challenge, requiring a full asset build with bone/muscle rig, full hair groom and FX. Of course, the harness had to be designed to be functional yet Christmassy!

Producer, Phil Brewster "knew from the start that some hero shots would be ultra slow mo, which meant we had to really go to town on Rudolf or we’d be in danger of him looking fake." The added challenge came when the team needed to give him personality without making him look cartoony. He needed to be having fun!

Phil added, "the rodeo rider was shot on a custom built bucking bronco rig which we helped to spec based on our tests. On set, we worked closely with the directors to make sure that what was shot was in the parameters of what we could accurately match in CG; we didn't want to make Rudolf look like he was actually flying off the ground. Overall, this was a great collaboration between Lighting, Comp, FX and Colour to really embed Rudolf into the scenes, and it might not be your traditionally Christmas ad, but we think its pretty cool.

Credits
Credits

Client: Erste Group Bank AG

Agency: Jung von Matt DONAU + Studio Sonntag

Production Company: Zauberberg Productions
Managing Partner: Andrea Roman-Perse, Frank Siegl
Director:Dorian and Daniel
DOP: Jan David Gunther
1st AD: Niki Sauer
Executive Producer: Juliane Ellrich, Katrin Zilliger
Producer: Ulrich Kreis
Post Supervisor: Marta Carbonell Amela
Production Assistant: Natalia Ciborowska

Casting: DeeBeePhunky

Service production: Solent Film

Post Production: The Mill London
Producer: Phil Brewster
CG Lead: Simon Burke
2D Leads: Dan Lorenzini, Vanessa Dequensey
Colourist: Pete Oppersdorff
2D Artists: Henry N’Guetta, Oliver Chenery, Rafael Vormittag
FX Artists: Dimitri Alloneau, Emre Sumer, Paul Carouge, Luke Dadley
Animators: Steven Grahame, Martin Rossi
Lighting: Simon Burke, Artur Drozdowicz, Elia Goettlicher, Fred Mac Leod
Asset Model: Silvia Bartoli
Asset Rig: Max Mallmann
Asset Groom: Mathilde de Gloahec

Post Production: The Mill Bangalore
Producer: Aisswarya J
Production Coordinator: Saranya Reddy
FX Leads: Amit Patil, Radhakrishnan R
Asset: Preksha Kumar (Lead), Praveen Sharma, Tarun Nishad, Tanmay Mayra, Brijul Venugopalan Nair, Tom George, Abhishek Nishad, Kartik Bharat Mistry, Piyush Sharma, Sumit Yadav, Vivek Mayanglambam, Ravi Kulwantsingh Ubhi
Animation: Sukanta Chakraborty (Lead), Kalpesh Bhikhabhai Patel (Lead), Arpan Rajpoot, Chinnaiya M, Raman Bhatia, Amit Ramkrishna Nandgaonkar, Nisham Khan, Dhruba Sinha
2D: Nanda P V, Amresh Kumar, Jhoshidh T, Anuj Bhandari
DMP: Chandan Mandal
FX: Biswajit Tarafder (Lead), Jayasri S, Abhishek Dilip Chitre, Polam Tirumala Reddy, Akshay Kishor Asarkar, Alok Dwivedi, M Kannan
Lighting Leads: Aritra Sarkar (Lead), Setty Chakravarthy (Lead), Manjunatha Chandrashekar, Surya Appala Surya Narayana Chetan, Chetan Gopal Singh
Roto: Sivakumar R (Lead) Mahendranatha Reddy (Lead), Sudhir Balaram Jadhav, Sudha S Inamati, Nitin Yashwant Thorat, Rahul Chandrakant Jagtap, Ravi Kant Mishra, Dibin K Dharmendran, Tanmay Bera, Krishnan Palani, Jagannatham Venkata Rakesh, Vishvajeet Kocharekar, Amulya Chandra Nayak, Sriram Parameshwaran, Shipa M, Chandra Sekhar K, Rajeeb Kumar Nayak, Joslin Job Mathew, Amit Kumar Shukla, Bikash Kalita, Kancherla Santosh Reddy
Paint: Noushad Kallingal (Lead), Manickam Pachamuthu (Lead), Debashish Sarmah, Manikandan Madhu, Rahul Kumar, Abdul labeeb K, Vallabhapuram Pavan Teja, Chanda Kumari, Kumar Ranvir Sinha, Prashant Kamble, Selvakumar Somasundaram, Sikandar Shaikh, Ashutosh Ramdas Prajapati, Mohammad Ghayasuddin, Arundeep R
Matchmove: Smijumon Viswanathan (Lead), Sainil Sunil Borse (Lead), Susanth Lavade, Swayam Prava Nayak, Anirudh Kurve, Arjun Babu, Kishor Shivaji Apune, Shubham Sah, Sathya Narayanan, Rohit kamble, Anhishek Popat Pise, Mahesh Wagh, Rutik Anil Sutan, Jaswantsingh Nikam, Tirupati Bhavani Shankar Derangula, Typain Rai

Editor: Sven Budelmann

Music: Supreme Music

Sound Design & Mix: Kraatz Studios

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