RingSide Creative and teams at studios across the US created a spot
for Ford in a hybrid style combining animation, 3D cameras and original
live-action footage shot on location.
Ringside Creative Revs Up a Graphic Spot for Ford’s 2015 Super Duty |
RingSide Creativeand the teams at Flavor, Cutters and Dictionary Films fromCutters Studiosall worked together from different cities on a new national spot for Ford Motor Company from agency Team Detroit. Entitled‘Front and Back’, the 30-second commercial continues the long-running Ford Trucks ‘Rant’ campaign that emphasises bold heroism and reliability. Its hybrid design combines animation, 3D cameras and original live-action footage shot on location in Los Angeles. The spot debuted nationally in August and aired in targeted placements online, during specific broadcasts and on cable. |
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Executive creative directorBrad Tucker, fromFlavorsaid, "To create the look, we experimented to find new ways to combine 3D, live-action, traditional cel animation and motion graphics. The real challenge came in adding the truck to the scene. Since our backgrounds were all created in post, it was easy to make them uniform and to get them to work together. But to add the truck, we needed to add the ground plane from the live action plate into the graphic floor plane. |
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Invited to pitch by Team Detroit, certain technical challenges related to past ‘Rant’ campaign spots factored into the creative brief especially in terms of enhancing on-screen impact, and developing very original, engaging scene-to-scene transitions. |
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Supervisors from Ringside attended the shoot at all times and meanwhile, design and animation got underway at their studio. "Keeping in close contact with Brad and the entire team throughout production was critical to this project's success," said Dave Peyton, RingSide's executive producer who coordinated the efforts of the team of over a dozen artists in Detroit alone, and ensured that work-in-progress and finished content reached Cutterseditor Chris Moorein LA as soon as possible. |
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“Chris also had to be creative as he edited, using time remaps, and also leaving enough time for the abstract, seamless transitions,” said Brad Tucker. “It’s tough to find an editor who can think abstractly about camera moves. Chris did a great job. One section that became difficult in editorial was finding the right shot for the truck pulling the tractor. We eventually chose an outtake that had not been boarded. While it made the tractor look huge and showed off the power of the Super Duty, the truck hadn’t been captured correctly in the live action plate. We had to make a graphic truck at the beginning of the shot and then stitch it into the plate as we transition to live action.” |
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“The driving force behind the graphics is the narrator’s voice and pacing. Frankly, it was hard to keep up with him sometimes. We needed fast-paced transitions that weren’t too forced, and that could be executed in only a matter of frames but still feel graceful and smooth. We also wanted to incorporate type as much as possible. In previous years we had seen the type placed over the picture. “This time we wanted to get away from that look and really blend it into the spot. Simple things like placing a corner of text behind the truck but in front of the background helped. Having it interact with objects in the scene - for instance, in the beaker shot we actually made it distort behind the fluids. These little touches go a long way to making the type feel integrated and not an afterthought.” |
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Adobe Photoshop, After Effectsfor compositing andAutodesk Mayaserved as primary production tools. Maya’s 3D tools were used more than expected. “Maya was a real workhorse in getting the live action married to the graphics, while keeping parallax between elements. Many of the renderings were treated so they don’t feel truly 3D, although several 3D elements – including the truck - had to be built in 3D to match the existing live action plate. Then eventually we transitioned between the two. |
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Colour was instrumental in getting the final picture to blend together as well. They rendered the final spot out of After Effects, along with mattes for anything that needed individual control. Mostly these were a background graphic plate, truck matte and type matte. Having these mattes gave them the control to closely fine tune the color throughout. They added colour hues to the highlights of the vehicles that would match the scene, or further blend real world mud with the background layers instead of using power windows that would have needed heavy tracking. www.ringsidecreative.com |