Fun, anyone? The Mill had it in people-loads when they worked with Gorgeous and TWBA on the Mountain commercial for Sony PlayStation 2, which offers entertainment for adults and children alike. Aired in Europe, then the UK.
Director:
Frank Budgen
Production Company:
Gorgeous
Agency:
TBWA
Multi-award winning director Frank Budgen and a TWBA creative team lead by Trevor Beattie worked with the Mill's Barnsley, who also went on the six-day shoot in Brazil. Five cameras filmed a crowd of over 500 extras, choreographed to run through the streets of Rio, climb buildings and to end piled up into a mountain of people. Stuntmen and acrobats were filmed from a helicopter as they ran up a 20-ft cone on top of Brazil's highest skyscraper. Most backgrounds and buildings were shot in-camera. In post production the Mill added a combination of crowd replication, set extension and CG work for the extreme wide shots.
Even 500 extras a day was not enough. Mill 3D artist Jordi Bares used Massive software to create thousands of extra digital characters, climbing and running, each with a brain to determine their actions. For the biggest shot Jordi created 146,000 digital people with unique vision, sound and touch-based artificial intelligence to make them behave realistically.
Agency: TBWA
Producer: Kate Hitchings
CreativeDirector: Trevor Beattie
Creatives: Tony McTear, Paula Marcantonio
ProductionCompany: Gorgeous
Director: Frank Budgen
Producer: Paul Rothwell
EditingCompany: Final Cut
Editor: Rick Russell
VFX & Design: The Mill
VFXProducer: Liz Browne
2DArtists: Andrew 'Barnsley' Wood, Jeff Robins, Richard Betts, Daniel Morris
3DArtists: Jordi Bares, Ben Smith