Press Release from Smoke & Mirrors

Smoke & Mirrors NY (SMNY), via ad agency GKV, recently handled post and effects for a five-spot campaign promoting the Maryland State Lottery. Four of the five :30s star an exuberant fan singing about the prize he or she won and finish with an SMNY-animated shot of M&T Bank Stadium - home of the Baltimore Ravens - filled with cheering fans.

Seats for Life is emblematic of the :30s, as a pair of buddies move through the crowded stadium stands - beer and popcorn in hand - rapping enthusiastically about their newly won 20-year seats at Ravens games. Sideline stars a wildly happy girl in a pink Ravens jersey, stomping along the sidelines, belting out lyrics as the team pounds their opponents.

The animated closing shot is SMNY's masterwork. The CG department created the stylized rendering of M&T from scratch, texturing it with photographed elements that department head Steve Parish flew to Baltimore to capture. CG Artist Wei Louie created the stadium model in XSI using the same perspective and focal length from the photos of the location shoot.

SMNY's R&D team - headed by TD Mike Donovan - then wrote a bespoke program to populate the stadium with 80,000 cheering fans. The flexible system allowed for crowd duplication across any piece of geometry. Donovan inserted pre-shot green-screen fans into Soft Image's Ice, from which his particle-system-based program filled the stadium.

With the fan-filled stadium in place, Lead Animator Serkan Ertekin created the movements in the scene and rendered the shot to portray a realistic but stylized look that heavily incorporated the Baltimore Ravens purple-and-yellow team colors. SMNY also handled all of the campaign's color grading and compositing.

Credits:
Client: Maryland Lottery
Spot Title(s): Seats for Life (featured), Sideline (featured), Kim, Skybox, Travelin
Air Date: August 2010

Agency: GKV
CCO: Jeff Millman
Senior VP/ ACD/Copywriter: David Broscious
Creative Group Head: Mark Rosica
Senior VP/Group Account Director: David Blum
Senior Account Supervisor: Kerry Flanagan
Producer: Marsha Derrickson

Prod Co: Working Stiff (Sideline, Kim)
Director/EP: Matt Pittroff
Producer: Steve Blair

Prod Co: Tool of North America (Seats for Life, Skybox, Travelin)
Director: Tom Routson

Editorial Co: Spotwelders
Editor: Dan Maloney
Producer: Laura O'Shea

Post/Effects Co: Smoke & Mirrors NY
Lead VFX Artist: Sam Caine
CG: Steve Parish, Wei Louie, Serkan Ertekin, Mike Donovan
Producer: Barbara Kontarovich

Color Grading: Smoke & Mirrors NY
Colorist: Ben Eagleton
Producer: Barbara Kontarovich

Music Co: Tonefarmer
Composer: Jimmy Harned
EP: Tiffany Senft
Producer: Christina Tortorelli

Audio Post Co: Clean Cuts
Producer: Kathy Terle
Mixer: Nick Sjostrom

About Smoke and Mirrors:
Founded by Creative Director/VFX Artist Sean Broughton (NY) and CTO Mark Widig (UK), Smoke & Mirrors is a New York and London-based design, animation and VFX studio. The recent addition of a powerful grading suite delivers complete solutions for any type of project. A creative and artist-driven company synonymous with vision and originality since its inception, Smoke & Mirrors has consistently succeeded because of its collaborative approach and ability to build lasting creative relationships with directors, producers, agencies and clients alike.