No matter what the origin of species, Residence Inn by Marriott is the favored accommodation on the road. Mcgarry Bowen's new campaign directed impeccably by Believe Media's Gerard de Thame stars an elephant, giraffe and family of penguins enjoying the comforts of Residence Inn by Marriott. VFX for the 'It's not a room. It's a residence' campaign are from The Mill.
"Gerard [de Thame] wanted to shoot everything for real for inspiration then use CG as a contingency," explains Paul O'Shea, The Mill's VFX Supervisor on the campaign. "We shot Stanley the giraffe in L.A. and Opal the elephant in Toronto. The penguins were in L.A. and ended up being a mix of live-action and CG."
O'Shea explains that both Stanley and Opal were pros and a pleasure to work with, the only issue was they were too big for the rooms. "We built a slightly oversized set for Opal, but couldn't build things like the kitchen, he explains. "So we matched the camera heights and positions, scaled them down and shot plates of the set. For Stanley, we filmed him against green screen. We learned that adolescent penguins and adults are very close to the same size by the time you are allowed to work with them, so every time we shot the live-action penguins with two heights to convey them as a family."
There were three CG giraffe shots and six CG penguin shots. Although there were no CG elephant shots, O'Shea explains that elephant skin tends to be freckly so a beauty treatment was done over Opal's real skin so it looked smooth and uniform. He also confesses that the shoot enlightened him on a fun fact about the animal kingdom: "We learned that you can't hear elephants walking! They're enormous but you can't hear them."
Agency: McGarry Bowen
Producer: Kristen Ettinger
Creatives: Jessica Giles, Austin Hamilton
Account Director: Christine Leupold
CCO: Gordon Bowen
ECDs: Ahmer Kalam, Rachel Howald
Head of Production: Roseanne Horn
Music Producer: Kate Urcioli
Production Company: Believe Media
Director: Gerard De Thame
Executive Producers: Liz Silver, Luke Thornton
Producer: Fabyan Daw
Director of Photography: Mick Coulter
Production Designer: Brian Branstetter
Editing Company: The White House NY
Editor: Steve Jess
Edit Assist: Alejandro Villagran
VFX & Design: The Mill
Executive Producer: Sue Troyan
VFX Producer: Angelo Mazzamuto
Color Producer: LaRue Anderson
Shoot Supervisor: Paul O’Shea
2D Lead Artist: Adam Scott
3D Lead Artists: Matthew Longwell, Steve Beck, Jamie O’Hara, Martin Furness
2D Artists: Gareth Parr, Becky Porter, Jake Maymudes, Daniel Lang, Jeannie Huynh (Remedy)
3D Artists: Michael Panov, Martin Furness
Motion Graphics: Andy Wheater
End Tag Animation: yU+co.
Music: Tonic-Elephant music
Music: Human-Giraffe music
Mix: Heard City