SAMSUNG'S EPIC SPOTS FOR THEIR SMART TV
CHI & Partners and the Moving Picture Company create epic and cinematic spots for Samsung.
Adam Berg directed "King of TV City" in which we see a viewer facing up to a herd of wildebeest, tyrannosaurus rex and a space age assault. London’s Moving Picture Company worked closely with director Adam Berg and CHI on a ten day shoot in Cape Town where the team worked with an animal park, racing drivers and set off explosions in the street.
The majority of the work was completed in London, Mark Gethin completed the grade in Los Angeles, the 3D department in New York helped to craft the wildebeest and their Bangalore studio assisted with rotoscoping and tracking.
So what work goes into the visual effects of an epic spot like this? The creatives created the setting by digitally removing trees from the street and enhancing buildings to give the look of a generic, modern city. They say creating a claustrophobic feel was key to setting up the first piece of action.
"We shot a herd of wildebeest on a massive green screen, working in a safari park just out of Cape Town, says VFX supervisor, Franck Lambertz. "This was challenging to say the least, as wildebeest aren’t exactly the most co-operative animals!"
Once enough footage was shot, the team utilised MPC’s proprietary crowd replication software to build the scene. Their team of concept artists designed the tyrannosaurus rex, which was then sculpted in 3D using ZBrush – enabling final shape and form to be depicted and allowing the team to measure the impact point precisely on the wall," says MPC.
The wall that is destroyed by the creature is part miniature build and part computer generated.
"Following the sculpt in ZBrush, we extracted vendor displacement, which allowed us to keep the rig geometry nice and light, in turn making the animators life easier," says CG Supervisor Christopher Antoniou.
"The t-rex had an automatic tail system, muscles and proprietary jiggle deformers, which was originally developed for MPC’s film pipeline."
The compositing team added debris and saliva to the dinosaur, further adding to the realism.
The racing car shot was captured in camera and driven by real-life racing drivers. The team added the wind effects and composited the spot’s protagonist, who was shot on green screen, into the scene - blending the shots together.
"The bear was a puppet, whose rig was removed and had his eyes animated to give him a higher level of anthropomorphism," adds the MPC.
The entire street was shut down for several days for filming the action. The final, epic scene showing a space age assault was a combination of live action and computer generated magic, where they referenced films such as Independence Day and Alien.
The commercial is set to "Adagio in D Minor", an anthemic piece by Hollywood composer John Murphy.
"Charge" – featuring costumed charactered charging along an otherwise deserted beach en masse - was directed by Romain Gavras, known particularly for his work on music videos for artists like Justice and M.I.A. He was behind Jay-Z and Kanye West’s "No Church in the Wild" music video, in which scenes of riots took centre stage.
The two films are part of Samsung’s new global campaign to promote its latest Smart TV, with "Smart Recommendation and advanced voice and gesture control".
Video: Samsung Smart TV “King of TV City” by CHI & Partners and MPC, London.
Video: Samsung Smart TV “Charge” by CHI & Partners and MPC, London.
