Going global: Rushes creates the invisible and shows the impossible via visual effects - English Beat

Post, March, 2004 by Bob Pank

LONDON -- Even after 25 years in the post business, Rushes (www.rushes.co.uk) is continuing to innovate and adapt to meet the needs of today's marketplace. Along with the usual high-end equipment, they have a powerful line-up of experienced talent. Today, Rushes operates in the growing global market. For instance, commercials are made for a continent or for even wider distribution, with the creative input, shooting and post often spread equally wide and delivered by press and viral Internet campaigns, as well as television and cinema.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Bill McNamara, director of visual effects, observes that at the agencies, "The volume of work is going up and the number of people involved is going down. So everyone has to do more and work practices have to shift. We all have to specialize and work together even though the client, agency, production company and post house may be separate and thousands of miles apart. This is the way the global market works."

SEE WYCLEF RUN

The Virgin Mobile campaign, which has run for over two years, is one such "global" production. The campaign has used two US directors and two from the UK, and the commercials are seen in the USA and Europe, including the UK. Rushes provided the consistency of color and style throughout the campaign, as well as post and visual effects.

Rushes transferred the 35mm footage for the Run Wyclef Run spot at HD resolution in realtime using a Cintel C-Reality telecine and da Vinci 2K color corrector; they conformed it in an HD Inferno from Discreet. The plot traces Wyclef Jean's downfall following a tricked marriage--hence the running away that lands him in jail. McNamara relates, "US law prevented an exterior shoot of the selected prison, so one of our main challenges was to create and composite a digital matte painting of the exterior of a prison with live action: guards, tower, threatening sky and rain. We combined 18 layers of rain, clouds and live action to create a seamless composite shot."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Another task was to composite flies into the toilet scene. These were generated at HD resolution in Rushes' 3D department and then combined with the live action.

Like many other global spots, this one was produced in HD. "We do HD in SD timeframes," comments McNamara. "With Inferno using the HD RT input/output card we achieved a four-day turnaround for Run Wyclef Run. It gave a lot of confidence to everyone seeing the results so quickly."

For years we have been told that HD would make the best "global" master so it is good to see the proof. Here it aided a seamless transition from final HD master to a cinema film print, an SD 16X9 television master for the UK and also a 14X9 master for US release.

DARING AND JUICY

Carl Grinter, Rushes' director of production, put the use of visual effects into a nutshell: "To create the invisible and show the impossible." The Wrigley's Juicy Fruit Office-Flage spot used both and, as if to demonstrate how "global" global can be, US viewers don't realize they are looking at a US-produced, UK-directed production. The only giveaway is its more daring action that leaps off the wall at you--almost literally.

The location was a 20th floor vacant office. Although that meant there was no clutter, there was also very little power, so lighting had to be reserved for the point of interest only. That left the internal background with only the fitted ceiling fluorescents lighting vacant rooms and looking massively different to the foreground. This led to a planned fix-it-in-post operation. The lighting was treated with a split grade in the HD telecine using two passes to grade the fore-ground with the background matted out, and then reversing the matte and grading the background. That produced the right colors, but still empty offices. These were filled with furniture from the graphics department, and a few real people.

The storyline follows a new flavor "Grapermelon" Juicy Fruit pack from the office vending machine on through the hands of several successive highly inventive ambushers. Perhaps the most surprising attacker breaks through what is revealed to be not a window but an image of the true skyscraper background glued to an easily breakable board, to claim his prize. McNamara had ventured outside with his digital camera and shot the real background and printed it onto the board.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Rushes' visual effects staff supervised the shoot to make sure the effects would work when they were composited in Inferno. Grinter points out, "This has long been common practice. It ensures the shots composite together as they have been planned and the collaborative responsibility in the production is shared and understood by all parties. Of course we have Alias Maya, [Softimage] XSI, [Macromedia] Flash, [Adobe] After Effects, 2d3 Boujou (3D tracking) for our 3D and 2D graphics, six Inferno/Flame rooms and a variety of telecine equipment. We can output to press, the Web, film and video. But in the end, we are a part of a production team."