Combining Houdini and onset wire work, VFX boutique Artjail helps Anonymous Content director Patrick Daughters achieve an atmosphere “somewhere between Kafka and Pixar” in this ambitious spot for US healthcare provider Village Medical.

JD Yepes, partner/VFX lead at Artjail in LA: “During the concept phase, we examined and researched a wide range of factory settings and films. These included 1936 car assembly lines, airport luggage conveyor belts, distribution centers, and Amazon warehouses. However, the most pivotal references turned out to be the movies Monsters Inc. and Playtime by Jacques Tati”.
 

“In order to flexibly build the dynamic rail system, our VFX artists created a procedural setup in Houdini to quickly build the entire system based on simple curves as well as generate hundreds of hanging doctors.”

 
“Pre-viz served as a critical roadmap for our narrative journey, providing a precise target that facilitated clear communication with everyone on-set about the exact scenes and elements that we needed to capture, thus eliminating guesswork.

“In order to flexibly build the dynamic rail system for each shot, our VFX artists created a procedural setup in Houdini to be able to quickly build the entire system based on simple curves as well as generate hundreds of hanging doctors along with it. Therefore, with hundreds of combinations, we were able to create the crowd without seeing any repeating patterns.

“With this procedural setup, we greatly reduced the render time since the environment was built based on camera angles. So the renderer could only focus on what’s inside the camera and didn’t waste time calculating things that are not visible in the camera view.”

Watch the finished spot:
 

 
 

 
Client: Village Medical

Agency: Deutsch NY
Chief Creative Officer: Samira Ansar
Executive Creative Director: Liz Gumbinner
Creative Director: Jeff Kopay
Head of Integrated Production: Miriam Franklin,
Senior Producer: Gillian Burkley

Production: Anonymous Content
Director: Patrick Daughters
VP Commercials/EP: SueEllen Clair

VFX: Artjail
MD/EP/Partner: John Skeffington
Head of Production NY & LA: Elizabeth Thuvanuti Keating
Senior Producer: Adriana Wong
Production Assistant: Andreina Villabon
Founder/Executive Creative Director: Steve Mottershead
Head of 2D/Partner/VFX Lead: JD Yepes
Head of 3D: Jackie Liao
Shoot Supervisor: Steve Mottershead, JD Yepes
2D Artist: Dayung Jo, Wes Cronk
3D Artist: Todd Herman, Mark Ingle, Cody Chen, Emily Irish
Previz: Darren Chang
Concept Design: James Healey
US Senior Data Tech NY & LA: DJ Miranda
Data Tech: Stephen Ramnarine

Color: Trafik
Producer: Angela Zappella
Colorist: Mark Gethin
Color Assistant: Nate Seymour

Editorial: Final Cut
Head of Production: Penny Ensley
Producer: Laura Mirabella
Editor: JD Smyth
Assistant Editor: Maria Cunningham