In an effort to help cultivate new talent, A52 provided its services to recent Art Center College of Design graduate and rising director Ania Hoffman for work on her Nike spec commercial. As a result of the 30-second spot entitled FULL MOON, the Russian-born Hoffman received representation in Japan by production company Size. The relationship was kicked off when Hoffman was introduced to A52 producer Leighton Greer. With Greer as a mentor, Hoffman teamed with emerging young effects supervisor Westley Sarokin to create the commercial.
In the spot, a basketball player stands on an outdoor court at night with the full moon hovering in the sky. As the sound of his heartbeat quickens, in slow motion, he runs, jumps, catches the moon in his hand, while flying through the air, then dunks it through the hoop.
"Art Center sets the bar very high for quality, content and execution of student work," Hoffman said. "Rather than restricting creativity by setting thematic or production guidelines, the instructors constantly encourage directors to execute projects to the highest potential, both conceptually and visually."
Hoffman said that a lot of pre-production planning went into the project so that in the editing room visual effects work on cable removal, sky replacement and 3D modeling would be seamless. "A52 took this project on a pro-bono basis, but they gave me the same dedication they give to any professional project. I simply could not have done the spot without their generous assistance through all stages of production."
"The film for this project was shot day for night," Sarokin said, "so almost every shot had to have the skies replaced and the backgrounds rebuilt or created... requiring extensive rotoscoping and paint work on every element. The main actor had to be cut out of all the environments so that background matte paintings and night skies could be replaced, color corrected and integrated into the scenes to create the illusion that the spot was shot entirely at night. The moon itself is entirely CGI, created from high-resolution photographs of the moon and then modeled and lit with an Oren-Nayar shader which accurately models the reflective properties of the moon and gave us a great deal of control over glow, contrast and brightness to help integrate the CGI moon in the environments."
Sarokin continued by saying that in the live-action footage, the actor dunked a soccer ball. "We tracked that soccer ball using 3Dequalizer, then placed our CGI moon over the ball and integrated it into the scene." The moon was created in Houdini and rendered using RenderMan. Sarokin used Discreet flame for compositing, rotoscoping, sky replacement, rig removal, matte painting, color-grading and the final online conform.
The FULL MOON team also included A52 managing director Rick Hassen, A52 exec producer Darcy Leslie Parsons, co-producer Kimberly Boyd and Renee Robson, art director Curtis Beech, director of photography Jonathan Sela and editor Blue. Telecine was handled by colorist Rob Sciarratta at Santa Monica's Company 3. Sound design and the final mix were credited by Eric Ryan at RavensWork in Venice. Nick Brett was in charge of rigging and stunt coordination. The actor was Shondel Larkin.
Founded in 1997, West Hollywood-based A52 is a visual effects and design company specializing in commercial and music video projects. The companys work has been honored with awards such as Outstanding Commercial Emmy, Andy, Automotive Advertising, BDA, Clio, British Design and Art Direction, London International Advertising, One Show, PROMAX and International Monitor Awards. Its clients include Adidas, Boeing, Chrysler, Ford, Nissan Altima and Maxima, Olympus, Playstation2 and Reebok.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
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