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VISA
'MONSTER CHASE'
Transporting
its audience from live action to fiction,
the newest Lara Croft 'Monster Chase'
leaves behind the conventions of a
normal TVC to create a project of
cinematic proportion for Visa's Pan-Asian
market.
The
campaign comprising of a 15-second,
20-second, 30-second, 60-second plus
a 2-minute cinematic version, includes
a total of 123 scenes, all but 15
containing a stunning use of visual
effects.
The
story begins with 'real life' Lara
Croft (played by supermodel Sofia
Vergera) as she plays with her animated
counterpart in Tomb Raider. The game
quickly becomes very real as the live
action Lara becomes entwined with
the game, the sassy adventuress getting
eyeball-to-eyeball contact with an
animated monster of gargantuan proportion.
"With
the latitude to create something like
an Indiana Jones or a James Bond film
action sequence, we had particular
fun devising a game sequence within
the spot," says Hunt. "It works as
its own little movie."
This,
the sixth Lara Croft spot for which
Animal Logic has crafted visual effects,
brings the heroine and her adventures
to a new level of sophistication.
The armour-plated fiend, complete
with dripping saliva appears half
organic and half mechanical and was
pieced together by Animal Logic Art
Director/ VFX Supervisor Simon Whiteley
who worked from extensive reference
material supplied by Bruce Hunt.
Overcoming
the complexity of weaving together
a game sequence with live action,
Whiteley says of blend between live
action with CG in the gaming sequence,
"There's nothing tangible to tell
you what's real and what's not."
The
live action sequence for "Monster
Chase" was filmed in Prague over four-days,
in the grand interior of the Strahov
Library, built between 1782-1784.
"All the past Lara Croft spots have
just involved Lara in a game but none
of the elements have ever come into
a real world situation; whereas in
this, we have both," says Luke Hetherington,
lead 3D animator on the job.
Animal
Logic's Hugh Seville (Lead Compositor)
went to Prague to supervise the visual
effects sections of the shoot, recording
information about the library dimensions,
lighting set-ups, camera lens settings
and textures so that the 3D animators
could animate and light the monster
accurately in the live action library
sequence, giving him a real and terrifying
presence in the scene.
According
to Hunt, pre-visualisation was an
essential part of the creative process.
"By the time I got to the shoot, I
had all the 3D elements locked off
and a good idea of the approach I
would take. Ross Wallls (Art Director)
had traveled to Prague three weeks
before and got all the room measurements."
"Hugh (Seville) brought the 3D
animatic of the library scene with
him on his laptop so I could plan
key shots and camera angles - this
almost took over from 'traditional'
story boarding because we were able
to workshop lens choices and camera
moves. This was particularly useful
for the scene when the CG monster
breaks through into the 'real' world."
Copyright
© 2006 Animal Logic
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