AWARDS
KTR Bronze
Craft / Audio & Video / Postproduction Excellence
Lotos
Dynamic
Credits
Client
Grupa LOTOS
Agency
FCB Bridge2Fun
Production
TANK Production
Director
Michał Sabliński
DoP
Janek Holoubek
Edit
Andrzej Jurszczyk
Sound
Juice Sound
Challange
The members of the Polish national ski jumping team are the heroes of LOTOS Group’s winter campaign. Advertisement projects featuring sports celebrities share one common characteristic – the shooting timeline is dependent on their availability. Hence, the availability of ski jumpers determined the whole production and post-production process. Additionally, one day of shooting during a sunny October versus the final result of extreme winter was one of the challenges we had to face within less than three months.
Close cooperation, based on mutual understanding and trust, established between FCB Bridge2Fun agency, TANK production house and the TELEVISOR team made it possible to prepare the complete offer and script realizable in such demanding conditions and to plan the visual effects. The idea was based on the play with virtual models and proportions in artificially generated, frosty, arctic world, which turns out to be just a miniature serving as an illustration of how LOTOS winter fuels work. The set design was minimal. Most of it was to be generated in a 3D environment. The minimalistic set design comprised of special designed platforms which enabled the ski jumpers to simulate their starting positions on the in-run. Proper lighting and precisely planned camera movements in 3D animatic made for an efficient shooting day.
It was clear from the beginning that the result would comprise of only several shots of actors taken against a green screen. Generating everything almost from scratch made it possible to achieve more than creating a frosty winter landscape.
Paweł Krzemiński, Project Lead
Pre-production is the 3D animatic mentioned before, matte painting, ski jumping hill mock-up and first attempts to its transformation. And intensive preparation for filming. Hours of meetings, production analyses and… very studious observation of the ski jumper’s aerodynamics during a winning jump.
Production
During filming we had at our disposal: four ski jumpers, a car, rudimentary and essential set design and one shooting day. In such a limited time we were able to film all car scenes and a lot of material for later utilisation in post-production.
The ski jump was filmed statically with moving lights. The opportunities to film stunt scenes featuring ski jumpers, including mid-flight scenes, were limited on the set. There was no way to suspend or elevate them. The spectacular freezing-over of the car windows is down to the achievement of the SFX team.
During postproduction we had at our disposal the gifted Televisor team, enormous confidence of the Client and Agency and cooperative attitude of Michał Sabliński, the director. The main tasks at this stage was creating winter scenery.
TELEVISOR
- designing and creating a 3D ski jumping hill - creating the transformation of the ski jumping hill into a gas station – creating 3D elements, including a ski jumper in one scene - compositing The process of designing the frosty surroundings of the ski jumpers began with matte paintings, by creating a realistic set design with matte images. However, this technique has some limitations with camera movements, which couldn’t be avoided in view of the final effect. All elements: trees, mountains and the ski jumping hill were consequently generated in 3D and the paintings were left for the background. The most important element of the film – the ski jumping hill – was created at the same time as the set design projects. From the get go it was not supposed to be a real ski jumping hill, but a magical, frosty, generated object. Its construction began with the sketches. After the project was approved, it was time for extremely precise modelling. Precise to such an extent as to make its later transformation into the gas station as spectacular as possible. In order to increase the control over the transformation process, we decided to create the car and the gas station entirely in 3D. The gas station and the ski jumping hill were not the only things generated entirely in 3D – the snowy star in macro close-up, snow-covered forest and car were also generated this way. And also, interestingly enough, the ski jumper during flight. It allowed us to achieve complete control of the camera work. Finally, in compositing, we added the snow and a lot of visual elements which create such a spectacular frosty effect
