Reel of the Month Club (Jan 2025): Virak Path
January 15, 2025
Buenos Aires motion studio Lumbre just finished their first project for FOX Sports USA: This hardcore launch spot and toolkit for the 20th season of “The Ultimate Fighter” featuring 16 female fighters all shot on location in Vegas. [Watch]
Elastic director Andy Hall helps mark today’s anniversary of 9/11 with this understated CG treatment of a children’s poem developed by BBDO and narrated by Whoopi Goldberg for the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. [Watch]
Interactive music video’s are a polarizing lot and no doubt this one for Ty Segall’s new “Manipulator” track, directed by Matt Yoka and designed/coded by Simon Wiscombe, will add fuel the debate. Is it “fucking brilliant” as one online reviewer calls it? Or is it just a chaotic mashup of random imagery held together by weak art direction?
Decide for yourself, play with the interactive version here: [Watch]
The all-Brooklyn duo of Joe Donaldson and Jay Quercia take inspiration from the Magnus typeface for their stab at Animography’s monthly animation project.
“We didn’t have any preconceived notions of doing a film noir style short. Typically, the Animography monthlies are very short visual-based explorations primarily using typography.
“From the beginning we knew we wanted to shape our story around the Magnus typeface but at the same time we didn’t want to make it just about the type itself. Early on in the development stage we observed that the way the type animates on is similar to the movement of opening and closing blinds so windows and blinds became the root of our idea.
“Soon after we landed on the noir genre and consequently built the story around the theme of high contrast lighting, corruption and a tortured detective. Overall, it was a great experience in focusing on style while also reaching further into the realm of storytelling.” [Watch]
Erin Sarofsky reunites with producers Anthony and Joe Russo (who they worked with on the titles for “Community” in ’09) to close Marvel’s “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” The Chicago studio presented eight creative directions with the winning treatment created by Sarofsy and comic book artist David Mack. [Watch]
LA-based British ex-pat director/designer Simon Clowes, Prologue veteran Ilya V. Abulkhanov and the Prologue crew instill the characters in this opening for Bungie’s Destiny game with a believable warmth and vulnerability rarely (if ever) seen in the CG cinematic genre. [Watch]
Ever wish you could control your espresso machine with your iPad? Me neither, but you may be tempted after seeing this seductive product demo for Saeco’s flagship model, the GranBaristo Avanti. Designed, directed and produced by PlusOne in Amsterdam thru Iris Worldwide. Music and sound design, ParkStudio. [Watch]
Cute anthropomorphic bakery products are not what I expect from an Axe spot but in the hands of MJZ director Matthijis van Heijningen and Paris VFX powerhouse Mikros Image (the team behind Canal+ “The Bear”), the unexpected casting choice works and moves Axe into new territory with “Dark & Gold.” [Watch]
Take a look at the unbelievable level of detail and craftsmanship Vetor Zero and Lobo invested in Gabriel Nobrega’s allegorical stop-motion film “Drugo,” produced as “a tool to explain the drug war and broaden the debate with the general public.”
[Watch]
Buck breaks out their full toolbox including “clay, spray paint, wood, lasers and a sprinkle of lolcats” to create this bright and brisk online video for onwardinternet.com (aka the internet suggestion box) thru digital agency Possible. [Watch]
Nexus directors Smith & Foulkes brew up two-minutes of apocalyptic fun for a serious cause in this broadcast and cinema spot boosting awareness for Stand Up To Cancer, the partnership between Channel 4 and Cancer Research UK, billed as a ‘killer night of fundraising.’
Smith & Foulkes: “The initial brief was to turn the table on cancer, depicting the disease as a civilization spreading aggressively – unable to prevent its own Armageddon in the style of a disaster movie.
“The main challenge was how to visualize the cancer cells. We wanted to steer away from the obvious route of showing cells as a bunch of grotesque alien germs, but we were also acutely aware of not making them too human or cute.”
“We also had to find a way to illustrate the new therapies, drugs and scientific breakthroughs that are fighting Cancer. We wanted their arrival to be initially magical and mysterious. so we used a glowing blue orb, an unexplained light descending upon a shadowy world.
“Disaster Movies rely heavily on vast visual spectacle and a cast of thousands, so working within our time constraints we decided to recreate this using 2D matt paintings to show a sense of the city without having to model every building.
“This gave it an illustrative and richly textured feel. Modeling and animating our cast in 3D gave us the flexibility of performance we wanted, and made them stand out from their environment.” [Watch]
The razor wars between Schick and Gillette have produced some ridiculous ad moments and depending on your level of cynicism this spot may be another one, but I prefer to see 1stAveMachine‘s new product demo for the Gillette Fusion ProGlide Razor with FlexBall Technology (ok, the name is ridiculous) as a step in the right direction away from hewn jaws and jet planes.
Beautifully shot, minimal in execution and featuring New York composer Son Lux, the 83-second clip produced for Grey New York is a small part of the $200 million Gillette is spending to market the razor launched earlier this year. [Watch]
Although best known for their striking 3D animated work, London’s ManvsMachine rebrand the film domain of UK broadcaster Channel 4 with an intriguing mix of live action, stop motion (the logo) and digital post production (provided by Analog).
MvsM say they developed “a contemporary take on a classic film strip / projector effect… to give the package a visual signature beyond the logo.
“The idents see the technique applied to cinematic live action compositions, presenting the Film4 logo in various locations. Each location/scene carefully crafted to elicit a variety of different moods.
“Idents begin ambiguously before seamlessly branching off into one of three possible endings, making minimal adjustments to shift the mood dramatically.”
Watch the finished IDs with all three of their alternate endings:
[Watch]
London’s Marshmallow Laser Feast call their sombre yet startling all-CG clip for Duologue’s cerebral “Memex” track “a 3D study of mortality exploring new photographic processes, in this case photogrammetry,” and view the project as the beginning of a deeper study into VR filmmaking.
MLF: “We worked with FBFX and their amazing 94-camera high resolution scanning rig, to create a full body scan of model Beryl Nesbitt. The scans then went to MLF’s long-term VFX collaborators Analog where they snatched a magical moment of the sunset through a window (the Analog Studio toilet), as a spherical panoramic HDR photo.
“These two photographic processes combined in 3D software where the toilet sunset illuminated Berlys Photo scanned form. We wanted to go beyond the limits of the audience’s eyeballs – using 3D to reveal different perspectives on the human form.”
Arvid Niklasson, director at Analog in London: “After we received the high res models from FBFX we started to build realistic shaders for the skin. Obviously the eyes are extremely important in making a 3D person look realistic so we built our own layered eyes and tear duct.
“Another thing we added was subtle hairs on the body. Since beryl is ‘transitioning to death’ we also had to sculpt alternative versions where she was covered in an ash like material.
“Extra to the main model, we also created all the additional pieces for the video like cloth and the rose. Once we’d decided on camera moves together with MLF every scene was lit, rendered & comped in house at Analog.” [Watch]
