Just two more days to the biggest sports television event of the year in the US: The 46th NFL Super Bowl will be played this Sunday, the Championship game of the American National Football League. While most are anxiously awaiting this year's already classic rematch between Tom Brady's New England Patriots and Eli Manning's New York giants at the Indiana Colts' Lucas Oil Stadium, the final match of the season is also known to have the most expensive, and brilliantly created ad campaigns.
Okay, so normally I would agree that most commercials out there are just scrambling your brain, but there are certainly a few gems that can make your jaw drop and the Super Bowl has made a tradition of it to show some pretty impressing stuff. The huge amount of viewers (100.000.000 world wide) and the extremely high costs of air time during the match, makes the Super Bowl the perfect showcase for exclusive and expensive commercials. The average cost for a 30-second spot this year was $3.5 million to $4 million Dollars. Remember last year, Coca Cola had the brilliantly CG animated 'Siege', directed by FX&Mat and created by the multi Oscar nominated and winning studio 'Framestore'.
Above and below: 3D models for the dragon from 'Siege'. Framestore won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and the BAFTA in 2008 for their work on 'The Golden Compass' and was nominated in 2007 for 'Superman Returns', in 2009 for 'The Dark Knight' and in 2010 for 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1'.
The London based CG house also worked on every Potter movie since the first one came out and has worked elaborately on the final one, 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2' (the last of the eight movie franchise and the second based based on J.K. Rowlings seventh book) which became the third highest grossing film ever (worldwide a total of $1,328,111,219 Billion dollars). Framestore, along with Moving Pictures Company and Double Negative have collectively worked on the VFX for 'Hallows 2'. Tim Burke, David Vickery, Greg Butler and John Richardson are nominated for their work and are up for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects this year, but will have to compete with the extremely talented creative team behind 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' (also nominated are Transformers: Dark of the Moon', 'Hugo' and 'Real Steel').
above and below: designs and 3D models for 'Balfour' the main character in Coca Cola's 'Siege' and the Orc general and his beast.
'Siege' is nominated for the 10th annual VES Awards, the awards for outstanding visual effects given by the Visual Effects Society. Framestore is among the nominees in the category 'Oustanding Visual Effects in an Animated Commercial or Video Game Trailer'.The ceremony takes place February 7th. The VES is the entertainment industry's only non-profit honorary society dedicated to advancing the arts, sciences and applications of visual effects. It represents the full breadth of visual effects practitioners in all areas of entertainment from film, television and commercial to music videos and games. It currently has 2300 members in 26 countries.
This week Coca Cola announced it would be trading the dragons for their regular Polar bear characters, as they would be part of a much larger campaign (they're having their own party at CokePolarBowl.com where you can watch the game live and comment on it through facebook, etc). So unfortunately no sequel to 'Siege'. If you've never been able to watch this brilliantly animated commercial, check it out below, (you can toggle 1080p HD) I've added the polar bears vid behind it (sure, they're cool too!). You can also head over to Pixologic who have the video up on their site, followed by some behind-the-scenes footage and an interview with the creators. If you want to read what Framestore's visual effects supervisor Diarmid Harrison-Murray had to say about it, you can also read his interview at FXGuide. Anyway, gonna have fun watching the game Sunday, so Cheers guys!
No comments:
Post a Comment