Issued by: Ministry of Illusion


Jonathan Parkinson of Fresheye Films intended to show the hero character interacting with little adults. Not dwarves, not children, little adults and little adults alone!

Where the hero adult was in the same shot as the “little people”, this was easily achieved by shooting separate, matching plates of the hero adult character and the smallest adults that his producer, Ashley Kruger, could find.

The “little people” were then downsized and composited into the shot of the hero. In order to add realism the “little people” were shot with oversized props and their shadows were added back over the floor in flame.

It however became a little trickier when the hero adult was to interact with the “little people”. The only way that this could be achieved was to shoot the hero interacting with children who had proportions similar to that of adults. Matching plates were then shot of the “little people” adults performing exactly the same action. Head replacements were then done on each of the “little people” in flame. In order to ease this apparent visual effects nightmare, the “little people” were dressed in helmets throughout the commercial and shot with tracking points on their faces.

It did not stop there...

The commercial was shot on location at Lanseria airport but the officials would not allow the crew to close off the entire airport for the day. They therefore blocked off areas with green screens and the long corridors and clean airport scenes were composited in as stills in post. In addition, the airplane that takes off was built in 3D and composited behind the window which was also built in flame. Finally a 3D tear drop was created and composited onto the one “little lady's” face.

This commercial required a lot of careful pre-production, precise shooting and hours of painstaking cleanup, compositing, integrating and finessing by Marios Nicollettis, the visual effects supervisor and flame artist on the job. All this proved worthwhile as the result was a flawless commercial, a highly successful campaign and a bronze Loerie in Network BBDO's trophy cabinet.

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[30 Dec 2007 15:23]

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