MPC Helps Virgin Mobile Get Surreal with Mother NY and Traktor
Raining phones, crazy mirror-ball worlds, a purring shark, and Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips – all this and more make up the insanely surreal “Retrain Your Brain” from Mother NY, Traktor and MPC for Virgin Mobile. The rapid-fire montage lends a hypnotic tone to the minute-long ad, making for a mind-blowing visual spectacle, aided by the CG and 3D experts at MPC.
To give the spot its affect and imagery, MPC’s team of VFX artists, headed up by CD Alex Lovejoy, worked with director Traktor and Mother NY to develop a slew of out-of-this-world concepts to imbue the spot with its hypnagogic feel.
“We had the most fun with our ‘Bunny Brain,’ which went through various incarnations and styles, ranging from plastic toy to striped amphibian,” explained Lead 3D Artist Liam Griffin. “We also found ourselves jumping around the studio, trying to decide how a bunny brain would move and where its legs would go!”
MPC’s Marcus Wood joined Traktor on-set, allowing them to collaborate in real-time to map and rig various scenes for seamless VFX integration. The MPC team was then tasked with creating all the screen composites for each scene, adding twirling, mesmerizing backgrounds utilizing Cinema 3D, and animated VFX entities using Maya and Mudbox.
“What an awesome project to be a part of; a visual feast of truly cool shots,” said Lovejoy. “And as always it’s great fun working with Traktor and Mother. Our team at MPC had a fantastic time.”
Downloads:
Credits:
Client: Virgin Mobile
Spot Title: Retrain Your Brain
Air Date: March 2013
Advertising Agency: Mother NY
Director: Traktor
DOP: Matty Libatique
EP: Richard Ulfvengren
Producer: Rani Melendez
Editorial: Arcade
Editor: Geoff Hounsell
VFX: MPC
Creative Director: Alex Lovejoy
Shoot Supervisor: Marcus Wood
3D Lead: Liam Griffin
VFX Team: Mikael Pettersson, Carl Fong, Bashir Hamid, Jonathan McKee, Andrew Montague, Jimmy San, Andres Weber, Corey Langelotti
EP: Justin Brukman
Producer: Mitch Stockwell
Color Grading: MPC
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.