When the biggest day in advertising arrived on Sunday with Super Bowl XLVI, millions saw a pair of Hyundai spots featuring VFX by MPC. Chief among the studio's efforts is a fully photorealistic cheetah racing a Veloster sports car.
Cheetah, a collaborative effort between MPC, Innocean and Rattling Stick Director Daniel Kleinman, opens as a Veloster and a caged cheetah square off at the starting line of a desert airstrip. The race begins in a whirl of squealing tires and roaring as the big cat's handler flings the cage door open. It takes only a second for the world's fastest land animal to realize he's in an unwinnable race and turn his aggression on his handler.
MPC created the photoreal cheetah by photographing a real specimen on set and capturing high-dynamic-range pictures of the lighting conditions, then combining both of those elements in Furtility, the studio's in-house fur-and-hair tool. To test the efficacy of their project, the studio produced an image with three cheetahs and asked in-house artists and producers to identify the real one. On all but one case, they missed.
"Creature work is difficult at best, but creating an animal that really exists and is in the preceding shot is particularly demanding," noted MPC LA Managing Director Andrew Bell. "Our in-house experts had to do just that in Cheetah. Between Furtility and fur gurus such as Dominic Edwards, producing this spot was not only possible, but pleasurable."
MPC also handled clean-up work on the vehicle and environment in a spot promoting Hyundai's Genesis Coupe R-Spec. When a distinguished business executive seems to pass on in the passenger seat just before revealing the one-word secret of success to his young driver, the quick-thinking man jolts the oldster back to life with a series of powerful braking maneuvers.
Downloads:
Credits:
Client: Hyundai Veloster Turbo
Spot Title: Cheetah, Think Fast
Air Date: Super Bowl 2012
Agency: Innocean
Head of Production: Will Woollett
CD: Robert Prins, Max Godsil
ACD: Kevin Samuels, Frauke Tiemann
Senior Agency Producer: Jennifer Weinberg
Production Company: Rattling Stick
Director: Daniel Kleinman
DOP: Giorgio Scali
Producer: Johnnie Frankel
Editorial: Cut and Run
Editor: Steve Gandolfi
VFX: MPC
Executive Producer: Asher Edwards
Producer: John Attard
Production Coordinator: Stefano Salvini
VFX Supervisor: Dan Sanders
VFX Creative Director: Jake Mengers
VFX Team: Dan Sanders, Steward Burris, Dominic Edwards, Michael Wynd, Mark Gethin, Brinton Jaecks, Fabio Zaveti, Andrew Roberts, Daniel Kmet, Krystal Chinn, Katerina Arroyo
Telecine: MPC LA
Colorist: Mark Gethin
About MPC:
MPC is an award winning VFX and Digital studio servicing the advertising, motion picture and television industries. From its London, New York, Santa Monica, Vancouver, and Bangalore offices, MPC's dynamic and diverse team delivers industry-defining VFX, animation, motion graphics, color grading, production, projection mapping, social and mobile application development, online advertising, data management, software R&D and pipeline development.With a trio of integrated divisions, MPC utilizes a unified approach that drives the use of existing or newly created assets across the whole range of today's media landscape. MPC Creative handles client projects directly with top-notch directing, CG animation and character design. MPC FX Studio is a dedicated corps of graphic and digital designers who bring clients' visions to life. MPC Data Lab processes the content and makes it available for editing on demand. MPC is a Technicolor Company.
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