Framestore has helped take PHILIPS' award-grabbing campaign, Parallel Lines, into a whole new dimension with its sixth incarnation, The Foundling.
Framestore Turns Circus into 3D Experience for Philips Parallel Lines Film
Press Release from Framestore
(October 11, 2010) – Framestore has helped take PHILIPS' award-grabbing campaign, Parallel Lines, into a whole new dimension with its sixth incarnation, The Foundling. The film is available to view at PHILIPS in 2D and in-store in 3D as a way of demonstrating Philips' new 3D TVs.
RSA's Barney Cokeliss added his vision to the campaign's set dialogue of six ambiguous lines by decamping to the circus in glorious 3D. As the UK's leading specialist in stereo 3D, Framestore was brought on board to craft both the 3D and 2D effects.
Shot in a nostalgic and poetic style, The Foundling opens with a human unicorn baby being abandoned at a circus. The boy and his unicorn horn grow up to be included in the circus' freak show, much to the amusement of its spectators. But one day the unicorn's mother returns. Identifying the forlorn look on her face, the unicorn chases her through the circus and its wondrous spectacles.
Framestore's brief was to create a subtle and immersive 3D experience, in the style of their previous work for Avatar. However, the circus-based nature of the commercial lent itself perfectly to certain moments of 3D that make viewers jump out of the way, for example - the knife throwing scene.
As London's only commercials visual effects house to use Mistika, Framestore used the new kit as a one-stop shop for conforming the stereo footage, tech fixing right and left eye glitches and colour grading. While Mistika offers a full coulour grading tool-set, Barney Cokeliss wanted Framestore's telecine artist - Dave Ludlam - to add his signature grade. The pipeline was thus adapted to suit both Spirit and Mistika; images were outputted into Spirit and fed back into Mistika using the same details and timecodes. The images were then further embellished for the final grade and 3D finish back in Mistika.
Given the tight three-week schedule, the film's visual effects were kept as simple as possible, for example - by cleverly using split screen techniques rather than CG, so as to minimise simultaneous and seamless right and left eye correction on each effect. VFX work of mention was de-ageing of the mother for the opening scene when she abandons her baby and the coconut shy ball that flies out of the screen. Framestore was also tasked with designing the 'time passing' poster montage in a way that also showed 3D depth to best effect.
Tim Keene, Framestore's Executive Producer, Commercials, said: "This project is our first major output for 3D commercial work. The whole production went remarkably smoothly, thanks to all the learning we gained from working on Avatar. By keeping things simple, we managed to help create a subtle piece of 3D that's quietly beautiful whilst also being dynamically three-dimensional."
The PHILIPS Parallel Lines campaign invites directors to put forward their own unique visions of a set six-line dialogue to illustrate that: "There are millions of ways to tell a story. There's only one way to watch one."
