Making a bit of a splash

Posted: March 16th, 2009 |

We’re delighted, and ever so slightly relieved to unveil our latest project, a campaign for the launch of Fonterra’s new water product Whole. After an exhilarating but at times arduous four months in production, the animated 30′ spot, and 15″ cut-down finally go to air next week. Created by Nigel Corbett, Marc Chetcuti and freelance producer Pat Cox of Auckland agency Sugar, the script called for photo realistic water to behave in complex and unusual ways. From the moment we first laid eyes on the storyboard, we knew this was going to be one of the most challenging projects we had ever undertaken at DMG. If we had grasped at the time, just how challenging – we might well have thought twice about saying yes with such unseemly haste.

From the outset, we realised we were going to need some specialist help, and we we’re lucky enough to fall into league with the brilliant Mark Stasiuk of FusionCI Studios in Santa Monica, California. Mark has a PhD in geophysical fluid dynamics, and the brain the size of a small planet – although he is far to modest to admit as much. At Fusion, Mark, producer Lauren and his small team specialise in using complex particle simulations to create amazing fluid effects for TV and film, including VFX work for features, The Guardian, National Treasure II, and most recently The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Through November and December of last year, Linds and Mark collaborated on designing the shots for the spot, with Linds modeling and animating, and Mark custom coding software tools to bring the water to life and allowing us to “direct” its performance. “It was a very interactive process” says Linds. “We would decide how we wanted the water to look and behave at any given point, and Mark would go away and write a piece of code that would give us the controls we needed to achieve what we wanted. We had a live Skype chat feed running constantly, and exchanged Quicktime movies and test renders via ftp daily.”

As R&D continued over the Christmas period, the Fusion simulations became increasingly complex, involving several million particles, and taking several days to run each new version. As each new iteration was completed, the data was then transferred to DMG, for additional animation, texturing, lighting and rendering. “The final meshes we were working with were in the region of 5 million polygons per frame so keeping the render times to a manageable length was a big problem – we ended up buying a bunch of high end IBM servers to beef up our render-farm and had to put in new air-con to keep them from overheating.” says Linds. The render-farm was running flat out throughout February and early March, outputting the various passes required by DMG’s Dan Short, who did the final compositing, post effects and grading.

Thanks and recognition should also go to our fantastic clients at Fonterra, Kate, Hillary and Erin who were endlessly enthusiastic, supportive and patient throughout what must have seemed a very long haul. Client’s so often get a bad rap in our business, it feels good to give credit where it’s due.

So was it all worth it? Well you can be the judge. The ad will be screening in NZ from Sunday March 16th.

FusionCIS specializes in high-end CG fluid effects, so of course when we saw DMG’s treatment we were very excited by the challenge. By chance we had just completed initial R&D on a new, dynamic way of making fluid take on any shape we wanted, a very challenging effect to pull off. The Whole project struck us as the perfect opportunity to really push this new technology, and use it to achieve some beautiful visuals. The project definitely saw us evolving our CG fluid methods, as we built in a wide variety of new ways to control the behaviour of the water. The shot where the water goes from puddle to brain to bridge to bananas was especially challenging technically and artistically, since it’s one continuous 650-frame shot all done in a single, complicated simulation. DMG were an outstanding group to work with; they gave us the time and creative space we needed to make the fluids work, and had brilliant ideas on how to get the most out of the water. On top of that, their great camera work and lighting made the water look fabulous. The teamwork on this project created a startlingly unique and stunning piece that speaks for itself.“
Mark Stasiuk FusionCI Studios

If you’re interested in a more technical account of the production process, you might like to read Mark Staiuk’s detailed case study for the RealFlow website.

View Quicktime movie

The Smartwater Role of Honour

For DMG

Director: Linds Redding
Producer: Kiri Hay
3D modeling, lighting & rendering: Linds Redding
Compositing: Dan Short
Grading and Finishing: Dan Short
Additional 3D modeling: David Downes
Intern: Mell Tuskia

For FusionCI Studio CA

CG Supervisor: Mark Stasiuk
Executive Producer: Lauren Millar

For Sugar

Producer: Pat Cox
Writer: Nigel Corbett
Art Director: Marc Chetcuti
Account Director:Vanya Piacun