Light of Day delivers artful musings of newfound millionaire in The Car and Garden, two new spots for the New York Lottery.
NY-based VFX creative shop Light of Day captures the musings of a newfound millionaire in the artful and comedic :30 The Car for New York Lottery out of DDB, NY. Produced by O Positive, The Car features a man driving across a bridge while contemplating rock ‘n’ roll semantics, suddenly freed of the daily mundane thoughts of his less-than-lucky cohorts due to his recent winnings. The campaign also features the additional :30, Garden, which gracefully transitions from high above a beautifully manicured garden down into the introspective mind of a NY Lottery winner. Light of Day handled comprehensive visual effects for the campaign, from on set supervising to final finish.
To create the vivid imagery in these spots, Light of Day was tasked with seamlessly marrying helicopter and crane footage of both the ornate garden and the striking bridge. To achieve the smoothest look, the VFX team chose to recreate a bulk of the footage in CG, including crafting an entirely CG bridge and car as well as building out a CG garden to match the director’s helicopter shots. To ensure that every shot was as photoreal as possible, the onset VFX team carefully and meticulously measured every item on set to ensure that everything lined up to exact scale when they were matching footage in post. This data, combined with a considerable amount of set reference photos, allowed the team to take actual photos and map them onto the 3D geometry to create the most lifelike images that incorporated every detail from the actual shoots, including lighting.
Notes VFX Creative Director Colin Stackpole, “After handling CG components on a number of NY Lottery spots in the past, it was an exciting challenge to tackle such a CG-heavy campaign. It was an enjoyable to collaborate with the team at O Positive from onset to the final delivery to create the most photorealistic look possible.”
For The Car, a vintage Jaguar V12 was used in both of the shoots, but one was a ‘73, while the other was a ’69. CG Director Jim Collins worked prudently to ensure that both versions, down to the minutest detail, matched precisely. For the campaign, all rendering was completed in Maya with compositing in Flame.
The Car opens sky-high above a vintage sports car crossing a picturesque bridge. The man in the car ponders, “If drums are played by a drummer, why is a guitar not played by a guitar-erer?” The spot concludes on the same voiceover, logo and tagline.
Garden opens on said garden, complete with perfect ponds, fountains, trees and shrubs fit for royalty. We dive elegantly from sky-high down toward a woman strolling around the pond, seemingly without a care in the world. She takes pause as a pensive inner monologue begins, “Huh. Isn’t it weird that pizzas are round, but the box is square and their slices are triangles?” A concluding voiceover asks, “What will you think about when you don’t have to think about money? Play the games of the New York Lottery.” The New York Lottery logo and tag “Hey, you never know” close out the spot.
Source: Light of Day
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
