Quiet Man Livens Up Regional Sport Spots For Fox
Quiet Man has created the visual effects for the spots "Turkey" and "China," from the new four spot Fox Sports campaign via agency Cliff Freeman & Partners (NYC). "To convincingly create the effect of diving off a 50-meter cliff onto dry ground, I needed footage of a stuntman diving into an airbag, and a shot of a dummy falling onto the ground from an elevation of about 12 feet," said Johnnie Semerad, Quiet Man founder and lead visual effects artist. "With that we could then create a composite effect, using Discreet Logic Inferno, of the free-fall. But someone must have convinced the stuntman to do it himself because the footage that arrived showed a live person falling from 12 feet straight to the ground and landing on his back. I couldn't believe it. Needless to say it made for a very realistic effect." Semerad then added a small bored crowd clapping. In addition Quiet Man lent their compositing skills to "China," which exposes another little-known regional sporting event tree catching. In this spot, an athlete attempts to catch a falling tree -- unfortunately, he fails and is crushed, with on-lookers applauding half-heartedly. "The campaign promotes Fox Sports' regional coverage, which separates it from ESPN," explained Semerad. "I must emphasize that the agency invented all of these hilarious and absurd sports from the far corners of the world." The Quiet Man team was comprised of Flame artists Semerad and Peter Amante; producer Carey Gattyan; and executive producer Amy Taylor.