Press Release from Eight VFX

In six short years since founding their Santa Monica-based studio Eight VFX, Baptiste Andrieux and Jean-Marc Demmer have built an industry-wide reputation for inspired work across the commercials, film and TV space. Recently, the collective put their gift for artistic innovation in the service of the new Carl's Jr (Hardee's) spot titled Robot via David & Goliath, slated for a late June launch on TV, Radio, Cinema, OOH/Guerilla, and In-Store.

The spot which encompasses a :60, :30 and :15 versions - tells a simple, comedic story with a great twist; a robot comes home from work, feeds his goldfish, and then sits down to eat dinner, the delicious-looking Carl's Jr (Hardee's) new hand breaded chicken fillet sandwich. Having no mouth to eat it with, the robot becomes increasingly frustrated, smashing the sandwich into its metal face, leading to some unexpected consequences. The clever tagline? 'Machines can't eat it, machines shouldn't make it - and that's just the way it is.'

The spot came to Eight VFX after director Rocky Morton and the agency "saw our reel and thought we'd be a good fit for the job," says EP Shira Boardman. "We did a smaller job with David & Goliath last year, so we were excited to get onboard with them again on this one to really showcase our full range of talents."

Creatively, Eight VFX was involved from the start of the process. "From the start, both Rocky and the agency wanted to use a robot, and shoot a man in a suit - Rocky felt that was the best way to get the acting and animation that he wanted," explains Andrieux. "So we began following the design of the robot, as we had to make sure it could be animated in CG. Legacy Effects designed the robot along with Rocky and the agency, so we had a lot of meetings with everyone to make sure we got all the elements to be able to rebuild all the parts that were missing. And comedy's always a little tricky to pull off well."

The team ultimately spent a month designing and developing the robot concept. "Our big technical challenge was to capture the exact movements of the robot, so we could replace the missing parts and stay very close to the acting that Rocky wanted to keep," Andrieux reports. Adds effects supervisor Fred Hopp, "Once Legacy was done with their design, right after the shoot and during the edit, we rebuilt every single part in CG, so we had a virtual clone."

According to Hopp, the team used photogrammetry to rebuild the robot, a process that's been defined as recording, measuring and interpreting photographic images and patterns of recorded radiant electromagnetic energy and other phenomena. "Basically, you can either Lidar scan an object to remodel it or use pictures to reconstruct it in 3D geometry." notes Boardman." Adds Hopp, "Everything was based on pictures. You take pictures from every single angle, and then with the help of our software, we rebuilt the robot to within an 1/8th-inch precision, so we had a complete clone and could then swap any part we wanted."

Andrieux reports that Legacy actually built two robots; "One robot, that we called 'The Puppet,' which could be puppeteered and could move its head and its body a little bit, but it couldn't walk or hold or grab anything. That's the robot we copied in CG. There was also an actor in a suit who walked and grabbed the burger, and acted out the story. So for some of the shots that were extreme close-ups, we used the puppet. But in all the other shots we needed to replace the neck, the elbows, the hands and so on, as you could see it was a man in a suit."