Who knew that a flock of snowmen could be so scary! The Mill worked with the creative minds at TBWA Toronto, and Director Mark Zibert on 'Winter Warrior' for Nissan's latest spot.
The Mill collaborated on this winter wonderland commercial creating CG snowmen characters, snow drifts and explosions that helped Mark Zibert bring his snowman thriller to life.
Director:
Mark Zibert
Production Company:
Sons and Daughters
Agency:
TBWA / Toronto
On set there were actors wearing snowmen suits created by Legacy that were shot in camera. They only had around seven suits and a small army of snowmen were needed. The snowmen themselves were required to interact with other CG elements within the spot. This wasn't practical to film on set for difficulty and for timings so The Mill created multiple CG snowmen to join the attack.
The final climatic end of the marauding snowmen was also created by The Mill. Kyle Cody, shoot supervisor explains: "We came up with the ideal creative solution to show the snowman being hit by the Nissan Rogue as we couldn't use the real car or real people! We decided to use styrofoam cylinders that we filled with snow and had the car drive into these. The result worked exactly how we all wanted. We then replaced the cylinders with the CG and practical snowmen packing more action (and snowmen) into the spot."
In the end, the snowmen were no match for the Nissan.
Agency: TBWA / Toronto
Producer: Nadya Macneil
Chief Creative Officer: Allen Oke
Associate Creative Director/Art Director: Susie Lee
Writer: Jonah Fynn
Production Company: Sons and Daughters
Director: Mark Zibert
Executive Producer: Liane Thomas
Producer: Neil Bartley
Director of Photography: Chris Soos
Editing Company: Posterboy
Editor: Mark Paiva
VFX & Design: The Mill
Executive Producer: Melanie Wickham
VFX Producer: Jeremy Moore
Shoot Supervisors: Kyle Cody, Andreas Berner
2D Lead Artists: Kyle Cody
3D Lead Artists: Jeffrey Dates
2D Artists: Kshitij Khanna, Antoine Douadi, Alex Dreiblatt, John Mangia, Martine Lazaro, Yoon Sun Kim
3D Artists: Ian Baxter, Ross Scroble, Navdeep Singh, Taylor Cook, Ren Hsien-Hsu, Billy Dongyoon Jang, Yong Chan Kim, Sean Dooley, Jimmy Gass, Paul Donnellan, Luke Tickner, Christos Parliaros, Vasilis Pazionis, Quentin Sauvinet, Phillip Maddock, Bogdan Mihajlovic
Matte Painting: Jiyoung Lee, Henrik Holmberg, Melanie Climent