A Summer of Sphere of light and warmth was the focus of Brickyard's work for this spot for Bud Light Lime.

Bud Light Lime Sphere of Summer
Lastly, Brickyard VFX also created all of the visual effects for the visually-arresting spot where Bud Light Lime chases away the doldrums of winter and makes a guy's life like a fun summer party. Robert Sethi, one of the lead Brickyard artists, worked on the spot and he explains the spot was particularly challenging due to its constantly evolving nature.

"The agency had a rough idea of what they wanted and I had a conversation with the director and we talked it through about how it would look best," he details. "We had seen spots where they try to mix day and night in the same place and it usually looks like a composite of two different worlds, which is boring and obvious. We bounced around ideas and I came up with a concept image for him, which illustrated that if you keep the same lighting direction and ambient light as a base for both of them, it looks like the same world. It became the basic lighting we built everything around -- the same lighting with one having the sun's directional light.

"There were a couple of issues with this spot," he continues. "One was that we needed to show that Bug Light Lime is summery and fun and winter can be boring. The idea was to emphasis that winter is boring by making it grayish, dull and hazy. The snow that is falling that we add in seems harsh and fast and violent. We also used boring colors, many of which we added in post to make two different worlds. Basically, we shot a summer plate and a winter plate. We tried to dress up the winter plate as much as we could but there were limitations. We shot it at the Warner back lot in L.A. so it was pretty warm outside. We had practical snow but it was melting.

"And as we went into shooting, we decided to use motion-controller repeat heads," he says. "We'd shoot one summer plate with the hero actor. His movement would dictate how we would set up the mo-co repeat head and then we'd shoot other plates. It was a little bit of extra work because you have people in both plates. Even if the camera repeats themselves, it's not sure the actor can so you have to pay attention to that. And then another big thing was that the shoot went from a planned four days to a two-day shoot. It created a lot of extra work for us in post. It was awarded on a Monday and we shot less than a week after so there wasn't much time to plan it out especially with a shoot with so much mo-co or repeat head camera moves. We had to figure it out as we went."

After the plates were shot, Sethi says the hard work began. "In post, the idea was to take one shot and do that one shot and make the effect. But it was such a fast turnaround we hadn't decided exactly how the effect was looking. We had reference images but how the snow would work wasn't decided. So we decided to do one shot, make it look good and incorporate that look into all the other shots. Unfortunately, the agency need it completed in a couple of days from when we got the plates because they needed to test the ad. It was a bit of a different work flow but we found a solution. When it was done and everyone liked it, we went back and did the spot again with a more refined look. And even then the look was constantly evolving. After the testing, the first shot we did was the last shot with the dome over him. The agency wanted the dome effect around the guy and we had thought it would be more like that snow would get pushed around. So we had to incorporate the dome into the other shots. We had to adapt and change because we wanted to accommodate the client.

"As for the different effects that were created for the spot," Sethi explains, "We have falling snow, flowers and trees growing on the background, frost on the walls that disappears. Almost all the snow on the ground is matte painted and there is CG snow melting. The background is comped in too. There are a lot of small details that were added in. Like the woman in the back turns into a snowman. All of it was added to make it more interesting. Software-wise, we used Maya and RenderMan, and boujou for tracking. Flame was for the final compositing. It was all about making clever shots that were easy to reproduce. In the end we did about 19 shots in the commercial, with every shot having a visual effect."