90°W scores during Super Bowl 2010
Editor Scott Whiteaker and animation/VFX artist Vlad Sarkisov made beer bottles float in midair for the national TV rollout of the new beer brand, Budweiser Select 55.
Created by Momentum and produced by Larry Israel, the five spots feature bottles of “The Lightest Beer in the World” levitating in a combination of live action and special effects.
The live action scenes were shot in New York by acclaimed tabletop director Alex Fernbach, using a motion control rig and several effects passes. Then the project moved to St. Louis and 90°W for post.
Working closely with Fernbach’s production company, 90°W animator Vlad Sarkisov was able to import 3D data from the motion control rig directly into his Maya animation software.
The 90°W team removed rigging and replaced the ground plane where a hole had been cut in tables. There were several graphic issues to circumvent.
“It seems so easy,” says Whiteaker, “until you look at the details. You could see the rigging through the bottom of the clear bottle. You wouldn’t believe all of the things that show up on a surface when you lift a clear wet bottle off of it: moving shadows and reflections, the circular refraction of light created by the bottle itself, the reflection of the bottom of the bottle moving down as the bottle went up. None of that was there in the original live action shot.”
Four :15 spots and one :30 were created. “Ice” is the flagship of the group, with both a :15 and the :30.
In the “Ice” spot, a chunk of ice (rigged on a string in the original live action shot) slides down the full length of the bottle. But, the size of the ice chunk turned out to be too big, and not exactly the shape the agency wanted. And, the movement of the ice on the string made an awkward bump as it slid over the shoulder of the bottle. So Vlad stripped it out and started over.
“We created stunt ice,” Vlad laughed. That gave us total control over the size and shape of the ice chunk.” Extensive rotoscoping and planar tracking were also required to pull off the effect. In some spots, Vlad composited the final bottle from sections of five different takes, each with subtle advantages over other passes.
The client popped for the music rights to ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down,” adding a final energy that brought it all together. 90°W sound designer Mark Bartels created foley effects and designed the final 5.1 surround mix enhancing the spot to create just the right final effect.
ICE — Ice on string
ICE — High-contrast pass ICE — Hero pass
ICE — Gold pass ICE — Edge pass
