Soho-based post house Concrete's project for Jack Morton Worldwide titled KPMG GRADUATE RECRUITMENT FILM, received the Best of Festival Grand Prix Award for Corporate Productions.
The announcement of the Gold Camera Award and the honor of Best of Festival Grand Prix for Corporate Productions Award -- which both went to Jack Morton Worldwide -- took place at the Best of Festival Nominees' Presentation this month at the London West Hollywood Hotel in California celebrating their 41st Annual Award Competition.
This award recognizes the most outstanding entry from amongst the Gold Camera winners at the U.S. International Film and Video Festival 2008. Jack Morton Worldwide was selected as winner by representatives of the International Quorum of Motion Pictures Producers, an organization of the world's top production companies. This is the third consecutive year that the agency has been honored at the festival.
Concrete post-produced the stunning global graduate recruitment corporate film for Jack Morton Worldwide in HD that featured extensive offline editing, detailed graphic design, stop-frame animation, intricate 2-D and 3-D animation, grading, compositing, visual effects, engaging all of Concrete's staff.
Produced by Stephen Marsh at Jack Morton and directed by Hugh Ip, the film has a sleek commercial style and feel to it. Adam Doherty was the line producer on the project. The film is steeped in outstanding vfx and graphics work including subtle behind the scene work, achieved by Concrete's force to give it a seamless finish.
The film takes the viewer through interviews across the world and we see faces of all nationalities appear in KPMG employee ID cards, which materialize on the screen. The ID cards were created by Concrete's 3-D Graphics Department using various graphic elements. Smoke editing artist at Concrete, Mustafa Pertev, worked on keying out the reflections from the first green screen shots using Smoke and added buttons onto the screen. The movement of the laptop animation that is visible was art directed by Abi Tomasiecz, Concrete's graphic designer and composited by Mustafa.
"When I keyed the greenscreen reflections out, I tracked the screen carefully to keep it within the frame. The stop-frame animation that made the laptop lifelike and walk made it a challenge with ensuring that the elements were tracked with precision," Mustafa explained.
Mustafa also composited a brighter background into some of the scenes and used effective rotoscoping techniques as well as painting stairs out where applicable under the actor's feet.
In the film, we see the word "TAX" put itself together, made up of hundreds of moving miniature 3-D coins from every worldwide currency in perfect detail, all created painstakingly in Maya. Numbers in 3-D conglomerated into a shape morphing into the word: "AUDIT" and come to life tumbling off the page of an Excel spreadsheet in the next scene. The numbers and letters were created on the fly and formulate the word while colliding and falling into place. Aleksandar Stiglic, Concrete's 3-D guru, used a plug-in called Nema and Mel scripting to create the effect.
Other 3-D effects featured a 2-D car created in a 3-D environment. The scene depicts a car on a conveyor belt looking like a cartoon cut-out. Matt Rowley was the graphic artist behind the fabulous red racy car, built in 2-D. Large advertising billboards were created in the next scene. Rowley added improvised adverts into the billboard frames, altered the look and composited it into the scene with a realistic finished look.
Graphic Designer Andy Carroll was responsible for the storyboard artwork. "The storyboard is vital as it becomes the groundwork you work from -- we were very impressed with Andy's work on this project, his input was invaluable." Creative Director Chris Jennings said.
George Humphries in Concrete's 3D Graphics Department worked on constructing an expanding cityscape revealing the KPMG logo at the end. A stylized look was the ultimate result. The spec was for a generic city layout, loosely based on Western influences of architecture. An animated construction of a selection of "hero"-style buildings was created, giving the shot a time-lapse quality and a busy vibrant positive energy. The 3-D team then populated the scene with traffic and helicopters.
The challenge of the "KPMG-earth sequence" was to animate a pullout from a stylized bank building in Malaysia, which then zooms out to a wider dramatic shot of the earth to gain a global perspective. Concrete's 3-D Graphics team textured a globe; significant architectural landmarks, like the London Eye and the Kremlin were added onto the countries and continents. The famous Rio de Janeiro Jesus was modeled and textured by 3-D Graphic Artist at Concrete Christian Jelen. He also added trees and vegetation using Paint effects and then converted them into polygons using instances. Fluid effects were used to create realistic clouds. Stylized lighting was included to accentuate the globe and to ensure that the buildings and trees cast interesting depth map shadows using Maya Software render. Mental Ray was also used to animate, light and texture various doors throughout the film.
The film was cut by Matt Hall and Guy Morley in Concrete's AVID Adrenaline suites. Senior online editors David Cox and Chris Gilbert post-produced the film using SGO's Mistika Post Production System, grading the film in HD.
The film was shown internally at industry and KPMG conferences worldwide as part of their graduate recruitment drive for 2008, as well as streamed on their global careers website.
For more information and to view images of Jack Morton Worldwide receiving the award, visit the website at: www.filmfestawards.com.
Credits:
Client Director: Hugh Ip for Jack Morton WorldwideClient Producer: Stephen Marsh, Jack Morton WorldwideClient Line Producer: Adam Doherty Post Production Facility: ConcreteCreative Director: Chris Jennings, Concrete's Graphics DepartmentGraphic Digital Artists: Ben Ravens and Matt RowleyGraphic Designers: Abi Tomasiecz, George Humphries and Christian JelenStoryboard Artist: Andy Carroll, Graphic DesignerSenior 3-D Artist: Aleksandar StiglicOnline Operators & Compositors: Mustafa Pertev on AutoDesk Smoke at Concrete, David Cox on Mistika HD at Concrete and Chris Gilbert on Mistika HD at ConcreteOffline Editors: Guy Morley on AVID Adrenaline at Concrete and Matt Hall on AVID Adrenaline at ConcretePost Production System: SGO's Mistika, Autodesk's Smoke, AVID Adrenalines
