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In its latest collaboration with DDB, New York, and Director Bruce Dowad for Subaru, R!OT Santa Monica joins in taking a jibe at rivals to the automaker?s Outback SUV, portraying them as ?prehistoric? vehicles.
The newest in a series of effects-driven Subaru ads begun last spring, Stone Age shows people piloting SUVs á la Fred Flintstone?with their feet. The vehicles, which lack wheels, are held aloft by the legs of their owners. As they scuttle along, balking at streams and struggling up muddy hills, the better equipped Outback glides by.
R!OT?s Andy MacDonald acted as visual effects supervisor on the project and worked with Dowad in coming up with an approach that allowed the effects to be accomplished largely in camera. SUV shells were fabricated from fiberglass and carried by the spot?s bare-foot talent. As the shells still weighed in at a hefty 600 pounds, wheeled supports were attached to their frames, and then digitally ?erased? during post production.
Post work at R!OT focused on making the SUV shells look real. ?Animators and visual effects artists added headlights, made the windows look as though they were glass and the side panels like sheet metal,? explained MacDonald. ?The vehicles are portrayed traveling through all sorts of weather and terrain?and we added a lot of elements to the practical effects to enhance those sequences.?
R!OT?s previous work includes the spot Dust in the Wind, introducing Subaru?s Tribeca. In it, competing SUVs vehicles turn to dust, rot and decay as the Tribeca rolls past. In that execution, R!OT produced CG replicas of the deteriorating vehicles and used particle effect techniques to make them disintegrate.
A third spot, Together, about a man?s requited love affair with a Subaru Forester, required a significant amount of ?hidden? image manipulation, color balancing and other seamless effects work to complement a live action execution. ?We worked on the three spots simultaneously and faced a very tough deadline,? recalled MacDonald. ?We conducted some CG tests prior to the shoot, but other than that we had just two weeks to deliver. That was a very short time to accomplish something so difficult that met the high standards set by Bruce and the agency. It was hectic, we worked long days, and had no margin for error.?
R!OT Santa Monica is located at 702/730 Arizona Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90401. For more information, call Bill Frazee or Michael Taylor at (310) 434-6000 or visit www.rioting.com.
Credits
Title: Stone Age, Dust in the Wind, Together
Length: :30
Client: Subaru
Artisans client: R!OT Pictures
Agency: DDB, New York. Melanie Forster, art director; Mike Sullivan, copywriter; Sam Milgrim, producer.
Production Company: Bruce Dowad Associates, Los Angeles. Jessica Carlson, exec. producer; Bruce Dowad, director; Adam Cramer, producer.
Editing Company:MacKenzie Cutler, New York. Melissa Miller, producer; Ian MacKenzie, editor.
Post Facility: Company 3, Santa Monica, CA. Rob Sciarratta, colorist.
Visual EFX Co: R!OT Pictures, Santa Monica, CA. Andy MacDonald, creative director; Michael Johnson, lead cg artist (Dust in the Wind, Together); Andy Lesniak, Josh Hooker, Richard Wardlow, Dave Carlson, cg artists (Dust in the Wind, Together); Wensen Ho, Sean Wilson, Simon Holden, Tim Norman, Verdi Sevenhuysen, Inferno compositors; Cecile F. Tecson, Kurt Lawson, Miguel Bautista, Combustion compositors; Yann Mallard, matte painter (Dust in the Wind, Together); Erin Hicke, vfx producer; D. Todd Davidovich, vfx exec. producer.
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