Clouds
is a new spot for British Airways. Created by Ed
Edwards and Dave Masterman at BBH, and directed
by Daniel Kleinman for Kleinman Productions, the
spot is currently appearing in 30 and 40 second
versions in markets that include the UK, the Middle
East and Africa. Framestore CFC created the spot's
ethereal and lovely visual effects.
Clouds emphasises both the value and the
customer care offered by BA, and it does this by
showing the pleasure and wonder still inherent in
the miracle of flight - pleasures available to the
carefree, pampered BA customer. The spot starts
with establishing shots of a BA jet speeding through
and above a sea of clouds. The clouds themselves
are then transformed, becoming a school of dolphins
that frolic around the plane. We then cut to a young
child gazing out of the windows of the plane, and
realize that we are seeing the clouds through his
eyes. "We believe your holiday should start
before you arrive. You're our guest," says
the voiceover, going on to enumerate the ways that
BA make this happen, while we go deeper into the
boy's fantasy, with the cloud-dolphins 'submerging'
into a series of 'aerial underwater' shots. The
spot concludes with a serene shot of the plane heading
into a sunset.
VFX Supervisor William Bartlett supervised the project
for Framestore CFC, attending the shoots and leading
the Inferno work, while the CG cloud creatures themselves
(and the jet seen in many of the shots) were created
by a ten-person crew from the company's 3D Commercials
team, headed by CG Supervisor, Dominic Parker.
The one-day aerial shoot took place in March 2006,
with the aim of capturing as much backplate material
as possible. As is so often the case, it was not
as straightforward as it sounds. Says William Bartlett,
"We needed a plane from which hi-res images could
be shot above the clouds. The only one like that
in the UK could only support up to a 16mm camera,
so we went to L.A. Unfortunately, that city lived
up to its reputation for sunshine and blue skies
on our shoot day. But we had good weather information,
and so we headed north, cloud hunting. We ended
up trolling some 1100 miles up the West Coast to
find usable clouds, eventually landing in Seattle
that evening."
Bartlett also supervised three further days of shooting
at Black Island studios, two for the aeroplane interiors,
and one spent shooting overhead shots of dry ice
and snapping high-speed pictures of small explosive
charges being detonated – invaluable elements
in the final compositions.
There were two main 3D elements in Clouds
– the jet which we see cruising the skies,
and the dolphins themselves. One of the advantages
that Framestore CFC offers its artists and operators
is that of the cross-fertilisation of techniques
between film and television. Thus the Commercials
team hit the air running, so to speak, when they
were able to use a cloud-making tool that the company's
film team had developed - initially for Thunderbirds,
and also used on the forthcoming X-Men: The Final
Stand and Superman Returns. This tool operates within
Houdini, utilising Houdini's I3D voxel rendering
technology. It came to the team as a tool for cloud
rendering, and it was necessary to develop new techniques
to use it as a tool for cloud animation.
Of the process itself, Parker says, "Clouds can
move in two ways: sometimes they simply translate,
scudding across the sky, and sometimes they evolve
and develop – growing in one direction and
dissipating in another. We discovered that we needed
a bit of both these states. We need things to move
enough for them to be interesting from an animation
perspective, allowing us to produce some body animation
within the dolphins; but we also had to ensure that
there was enough of the evolutionary aspect that
it didn't look like a cut-out. That was the challenge
throughout this project – to try to find a
beautiful way of bringing these things to life,
but one which didn't separate them out from the
backgrounds." Describing the process by which the
final look was arrived at, Bartlett echoes these
sentiments, "The more they looked like clouds, the
less they looked like dolphins – and vice
versa. Somewhere in that middle ground was the ideal
place that we were searching for. The trouble is,
of course, that it's a slightly different place
for every viewer..."
The desired organic relationship between 2D and
3D elements meant that the look continued to develop
throughout the spot's time at Framestore CFC. "To
get the balance just right, " says Bartlett, "There
was a lot of back and forth between 2D and 3D."
Says Parker, "It was a two-way learning process
going on between Will (Bartlett) and ourselves.
An eddy in the backplate might lead us to create
something echoing this in the animation."
The actual dolphin animations were created in Maya,
by Kate Hood, chiefly, based on a model built by
Alex Doyle. These animations - jumps, swims, dives
etc., all with several variations - were of the
dolphin before it had even achieved its final cloud
form. The Houdini team then took small sections
of these moves for the cloud creatures. Andy Boyd,
Simon Stoney and Alex Doyle handled the plane, with
Boyd doing the shading and rendering with help from
Paul Jones. Telecine work – largely on the
sky material and interiors - was by Senior Colourist
Matt Turner.
With a gentle rendition of 'Leaving on a Jet Plane'
acting as the perfect accompaniment to the balletic
Bottlenoses, Framestore CFC have once again produced
some startlingly lovely imagery to complement a
highly original script.
Clouds
Agency BBH
Creatives Dave Masterman, Ed Edwards
Agency Producer Davud Karbassioun
Production Company Kleinman Productions
Director Daniel Kleinman
Producer Johnnie Frankel
Production Manager James Hatcher
Editor Steve Gandolfi, Cut &
Run
For Framestore CFC
VFX Supervisor/Inferno Artist William
Bartlett
CG Supervisor/TD Dominic Parker
R&D Christoph Ammann
TD/Animation Dan Seddon, Guillaume
Fradin, David Mellor, Andy Boyd, Michele Fabbro,
Simon Stoney, Kate Hood
Modelling Alex Doyle
Tracking Paul Jones
Inferno Assistant Marcelo Pasquelino
Telecine Colourist
Matt Turner
Post Producer Scott Griffin
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