Yes, it’s the launch of a new Guinness TV ad campaign and a chance to savour some quality visual feasts sandwiched between humour-free comic spots for supermarkets and talking-head fat people ads recommending consolidation loans – presumably to spend on food. In a TV environment where a quality ad is as rare as… well, a bar selling Guinness in the middle of the Amazonian rainforest, it’s good to know there are still some companies carrying the torch of movie-quality advertising.
Moth, the first ad in the company’s Out of Darkness Comes Light campaign, features thousands of CG moths created at London post facility MPC. It was produced by Academy Films from a brief by Guinness creative agency Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO. The director was Walter Stern, who has been directing music videos for 10 years for the likes of The Prodigy, Massive Attack and more recently Madonna and David Bowie. Stern has some hard acts to follow. Previous ad campaigns for Guinness have been directed by the likes of fellow Academy Films director Jonathan Glazer – whose Surfer commercial for Guinness was voted the best ad of all time – and Ridley Scott.
Moth was filmed over four nights in one of Brazil’s largest national parks just outside Rio, with an additional three days back in the UK to shoot close-ups of the moths and the product itself. To create the right atmosphere in the jungle, huge helium-inflated light balloons were floated over the scenes to give the impression of moonlight. Some real moths were used in the ad, but many more were CG creations. The real moths were filmed in the forest under the supervision of a Brazilian moth expert, who made sure Stern got the lighting on their wings just right. Hundreds of hawk moths were then specially bred for the London shoot. The bar revealed at the climax of the ad was just a façade constructed over the ruins of an old barn. The neon lights and other decorations were added in post.
“The agency came to us with comprehensive storyboards showing each of the elements to be included in the final commercial,” says Greg Massie, CG supervisor at MPC. “The main job for MPC was the integration of myriad 3D computer-generated moths. However, the greatest challenge in producing the ad was the fixed timeframe we had to work to. The delivery date was set at the very first meeting between MPC and the creative team, so the project had to be finished on time.”
The London shoot took place on the last three days of January, and with the ad airing on 24 February, there was only around a fortnight for MPC to carry out huge amounts of post and CG work. What made the job possible was that Academy approached MPC as soon as they’d given Stern the initial treatment.
“This meant MPC was involved throughout the project and we were able to give both advice and input for the CG shots,” says MPC Inferno artist Alex Lovejoy. Lovejoy attended the Rio shoot to advise on shooting for CG, to get live action elements for backgrounds and to take reference footage for the moths. He was also present at the London shoot to further research moths and film the settling Guinness elements. Greg Massie carried out comprehensive pre-visualisation from the accurate storyboards Academy provided. This helped Stern visualize the final look of the shots and gave the animation team a reference to help them decide which tools would be the most suitable. It also allowed for animation tests to be carried out prior to shooting. MPC had to develop a proprietary flocking system to emulate the way moths fly.
“There were essentially three different stages of creation for the moths,” says Massie. “The first shots feature approximately 10 to 20 live-action moths flying towards the actors in the foreground. These increase in number in the following shots to between 50 and100 moths, which are a mixture of live action and CG creatures. In the final shots, there are thousands of photo-real CG moths swarming through the jungle.”
Five different types of moths were modelled in Maya, including Hawk, Atlas and Wax moths. From these, derivatives were taken to create a mixed and more varied group. “Over the course of the project, the shape of the moths changed slightly to become less menacing and more graceful – more butterfly like,” explains Lovejoy.
Four animators and three Inferno operators worked on the project over the two weeks of post-production. The ad was graded by BTA Craft Award-winning colourist Jean-Clement Soret, who gave the film a grainy realistic feel.
“The live action moths were shot on a Phantom camera – a disk-based recording system that can record at thousands of frames a second,” says Lovejoy. “Shooting at such high speeds meant that every minute detail of the moths’ movements was captured. We then graded and composited this material into the shots.”
One of the main requirements for the spot was for it to have a natural, pure look, so it was important that all the elements appeared as realistic as possible. However, the ad also had to have high production values and match the standards set by past Guinness commercials. The pacy backing track, Sing Sing Sing, was written in the 1950s and was rerecorded for the film Swing Kids (Thomas Carter, 1993).
Guinness ads have come on a long way since the somewhat kitch commercials of the 60s. The After Work campaign, for instance, features smiling people drinking Guinness in a pub accompanied by a jolly male voice choir singing, “Guinness Guinness gives you strength, gives you strength, gives you strength,” with the cozy final voiceover proclaiming, “After work, you need a Guinness!”
Waiting for Marco
A far cry from the mini-masterpieces of the late 90s, when Guinness ran four TV ads as part of its Good Things Come To Those Who Wait campaign: Swimblack, Surfer, Bet on Black and Dream Club. Created by Tom Carty and William Campbell at AMV and directed by Jonathan Glazer, Swimblack featured ex-Olympic swimmer Marco (Lino Mele) attempting to swim to a buoy and back in 119.5 seconds – the amount of time it takes to pour the perfect pint of Guinness.
Lino was a major find. In one shot, he was required to do press-ups with someone on his back. Rigs were brought in, but they weren’t required: Lino performed the task with ease. During the swimming shots, stuntmen were employed to double for Lino, but Lino was the only one who could handle the take.
Riding a wave
Swimblack was followed by Surfer, which became a Millennium Product and was exhibited in the Millennium Dome. It was the most decorated ad of the year and featured a surfer riding a wave with huge white horses atop the foam.
The four Andalucian horses were trained by Tony Smart from the Smart Family Circus. Smart sprayed the horses with special spray to make them look whiter, and he added false manes plaited into the horse’s own shorter manes. Make-up was applied to make their bones more prominent.
For the surfing shots, multiple cameras were used – long lens shots from the shore, people towed out in boats with cameras strapped to their bodies, others floating in the water with handheld cameras, and even an aerial camera. The close-ups were shot in a car park, using water cannons, wind machines, a rigged up surfboard and handheld cameras. A number of ways of achieving the desired look were considered, including doing it all as CG and using real waves but CG horses, both of which would have given the team greater control. But, as Framestore CFC compositor Paddy Eason (now at MPC) remembers, “we were very aware that the kind of happy accidents you get in the real world – the natural movements of waves and horses – will always give you a better shot. So our final choice was to use real waves and horses, where necessary adding CG water and the odd CG horse’s leg.”
“We wanted to find a way of conveying the chaotic and violent dynamic of the film using CG elements to fill in the gaps from the shoots,” adds CFC head of 3D animation, Dominic Parker, “things like underwater hooves, bubbles, surf, spray and spume.” The footage was shot, composited and had FX added in colour before being transformed into black and white, so that the final look is not stark, but has a range of greys. All of the compositing was carried out on Cineon, with paint support from Matador and Commotion and CG elements created using Houdini, Maya and Renderman. The final conform and grade was completed on Domino.
Snail’s pace
How do you follow an ad voted in a Channel 4 viewer poll the greatest ad of all time? Turn to the pinnacle of sporting excitement, of course. Yes, snail racing. Bet on Black features all the drama, excitement and spectacle that any snail fancier would expect at such an event.
The ad was directed by Frank Budgen through Gorgeous Productions and filmed in Havana, Cuba using only local residents as actors. AMV claims the snails used were rare stunt snails trained especially for the Guinness ad. Apparently, a team of specialist snail wranglers scoured the world for the most photogenic yet trainable snails. After a brief period of acting and stunt training, trials were held with competing snails from France, Italy, Turkey and Cuba, with the Cubans winning, as not only were they extremely comfortable on camera and under lights, they also had a natural tendency to race each other. Whatever.
The live snail footage was posted and CG manipulated at The Mill.
A brush with dreamland
The fourth ad in the series, Dream Club, saw Jonathan Glazer return to the helm, with Framestore CFC again looking after post. The ad focuses on the eponymous Dream Club, a group of champion dreamers who dream dreams others can only dream of. Fuelled by Guinness, the club’s champion dreamer sets out to experience the ultimate dream; the dream that will reveal the true meaning of life. The ad tells the story of his quest, from the moment he nods off to the final revelation. In his search, his dream world and reality combine around the pint of Guinness he orders.
The ad was shot in black and white in sub-zero temperatures in Budapest in December 2000. The cityscape provided the perfect backdrop needed for the fabled Dream Club. Only local residents and some circus artists were used as actors, but 50 stuntman and 500 extras were needed on the seven-day shoot.
The main stars of the ad, however, were the computer-animated squirrels seen drinking Guinness in a pub. Whereas the horses in Surfer were largely real creatures blended into live footage, the squirrels in Dream Club were entirely CG.
Leading the project team was Framestore CFC’s head of creature animation, Sally Goldberg. “From the outset Jonathan (Glazer) wanted the squirrels to be realistic actors,” she recalls. “They were not meant to be ‘cartoon’ creatures.”
Serious squirrel research began, including the introduction of three live specimens to the Framestore CFC boardroom (non-voting). There were three major considerations in designing and animating the squirrels: their fur, the lighting and the interaction between the two. Responsible for this area was Oliver James. “I quickly realised that the existing solutions didn’t have the flexibility we needed,” he says. He embarked on a process of ‘heavy modification’ to Maya’s Fur plug-in and Pixar’s Mtor Fur, developing an entirely new set of software tools for the creation and lighting of fur. The results was astonishingly realistic fur, with a level of subtlety, shading and detail probably never achieved before in a commercial.
We never really get to the bottom of the meaning of life, but it probably has more to do with Guinness than squirrels.
Running hot and cold
Quality ads didn’t end with the Good Things Come To Those Who Wait campaign. AMV’s Believe campaign of two years ago featured the commercial Lava for Guinness Ice, set during a volcanic eruption.
Directed by Rupert Sanders for Outsider, the spot opens with a remote rural community’s reactions to a volcano erupting above their village. A series of comic vignettes follows: a man looking somewhat taken aback as he sits in his bath in a house with a missing wall; a woman running out in her underwear to grab her clothes off the clothes line, and a pig scoffing a cake.
Men arrive at the bar to discover it is encircled by lava and that a keg of Guinness has fallen through a collapsed wall into the flow. Calmly, a young man removes his shoes and socks and firewalks across the lava, much to the villagers’ amazement.
The two-week shoot involved a crew of hundreds to reconstruct a mountain village and deliver the pyrotechnic effects needed.
Over 300 hours were spent in post-production, which was carried out at The Mill. The spot was shot on location in Poland, where The Mill’s flame artist Ant Walsham and Mill 3D artist Russell Tickner spent 12 days.
In Poland, Russell went to a steel foundry to shoot molten iron, while back at The Mill, a month’s work was carried out by Dave Levy to create a customised 3D shader, in order to create the flowing lava seen travelling through the streets. The program allowed Russell to create a unique rendering of lava.
Ant and his team tracked the CG molten lava into the live action plates. They also took elements from the molten steel footage and composited them onto the road surrounding the bar. Ant also built the volcano, which sits behind the town, and added flames to many of the scenes and enhanced the look of the lava our hero walks across to get to the bar.
With the increasing drabness of so many adverts on TV – the lame scripts, the banal appeals to vanity, the dire testimonials of ‘ordinary’ people who you wouldn’t trust to recommend a packet of crisps let alone a 25-year mortgage, and the appalling, interminable pseudo-science of cosmetic ads, why don’t you sit back, watch Stern’s Moth, and appreciate a major creative talent at work. Because you’re worth it.
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Vincent MatthewsVincent Matthews is a writer, production manager and industry consultant with many years experience in the film and TV industry. |