Framestore's Oscar Cred Opens New Markets

By Anthony Vagnoni
 

Working from designs by directors Fx & Mat, Framestore added depth to "Siege."

Super Bowl viewers this year got a taste of what Academy Award voters saw in 2008. Back then, they screened a 2007 fantasy epic called "The Golden Compass."  Directed by Chris Weitz, the American comedy director known for such hits as "American Pie" and "About a Boy," it starred Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Dakota Blue Richards and "Iroek," a heroic polar bear, voiced by Sir Ian McKellen.

The bear might have gotten the best part in the film, which ended up winning the 2008 Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for Framestore, the visual effects studio that created the CGI character, his arch-enemy, "Rangar", a host of supporting bears and the icy CG environments in which they live.
 
Framestore is justifiably proud of its "Compass" Oscar, says Simon Gosling, Executive Producer for TV Commercials.  The studio is also the only UK visual effects company to provide stereoscopic 3D visual effects shots for 2009's megahit "Avatar." All this underscores the pioneering work they've done in developing technical solutions for filmmakers, such as the motion rig they built for "Compass" which allowed the animators to perfectly marry the motion of a live-action actor riding on top of a computer-animated animal.

Simon Gosling, Executive Producer for TV Commercials at Framestrore.

Achievements such as this - along with its proprietary software for handling things like fur, hair and muscle movement - are just a few of the credits Framestore enjoys. But they seem just as proud of the happy byproducts these Oscar-winners have produced, such as the fantasy world of furry warriors and peaceful villagers seen in Coca-Cola's "Siege" spot, which ran on the Super Bowl last February.  Another credit Gosling likes to cite is "Max," the cute Labrador puppy who's the centerpiece of a long-running UK ad campaign for Andrex tissue. The pup has been portrayed by a live action dog since 1972, until Kimberly Clark and JWT London came to Framestore last year to render the beloved mascot in CGI.  No worries, suggests Gosling. "We're sort of the kings of the computer generated animal kingdom," he quips.
 
The effort took months of conceptualizing, design work, R&D and testing, much of which was done to help JWT reassure its client that a CGI puppy could retain the loveable qualities of the original. The results appear to have been worth the effort - Andrex and its computer-generated pups were pegged one of the most popular campaigns in Britain by Campaign late last year (the full ranking can be found here), and three new spots are set for release later this year.
 

“Max,” the CGI Andrex puppy, lets the agency take the character to new dimensions.

Framestore handled every aspect of the production and post on Andrex, from developing the treatment to shooting the live action to handling all animation and creative editorial. It's an approach Gosling says the studio is capable of doing, but usually only in special circumstances. Given the CGI-intensive workflow on this spot, it made sense, he adds. (Check out Max's introductory spot, "The Little Things," here.)
 
The studio lets prospects know that it offers Oscar-quality visual effects across all platforms, Gosling says, which extends even to the smart phone sitting in your pocket. (More on that in a second.) Indeed, he extolled the studio's platform-independent approach in a talk he gave at a TEDx event in London last October (which you can watch here.)
 
While Framestore has earned kudos for its CG creatures, the work that's gone into creating these effects is broad-based, typically involving everything from previz to designing and building environments, character design, motion capture shot in its own mocap studio, shooting live action, telecine grading and doing high-end compositing. Its business runs the gamut from features to TVCs to games, digital, the web – you name it. The bulk of the studio's staff is based in London, where 400 people work in its feature division with another 150 in its commercials unit. It maintains a small design studio in Iceland, home to some of its top VFX artists, and has a growing presence in New York, with over 50 full-time staff working out of a loft in SoHo.

'Kreacher' from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," brought to life by Framestore.

While the lion's share of its US work is for TV commercials, a growing features division is based there too; it recently created shots for the Angelina Jolie action spy thriller "Salt" as well as the forthcoming "The Smurfs." The London features division has worked on a wider range of flicks, from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" to "Batman: The Dark Knight," "Avatar," "Sherlock Holmes," "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian," "Quantum of Solace" and "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," among others.
 
Many of Framestore's most prominent TVC achievements have been built on its strengths in both character animation and high-end, cinematic CG – techniques that are labor-intensive and often pioneered on behalf of achieving a feature director's visions. Indeed, as Gosling points out, much of the studio's R&D work behind its feature credits has found its way into commercials, which typically demand the same level of production value executed in a fraction of the time, and with a commensurate fraction of the budget.
 
A good example is "Siege," produced for Wieden + Kennedy, Portland. Design and direction on the spot was provided by the directing team of Fx & Mat, via Nexus Productions in London. Framestore created the CG characters, environments and backgrounds seen in the mini-epic, working from the directors' elaborate sketches.  And while this spot was an example of where the storyline and concept for the characters was designed beforehand, Framestore's in-house Art Department can develop these icons from the earliest stages of ideation.

Coke's "Siege" benefited from Framestore's work in feature films.

"We're partnering with clients right at the conceptual stage now," says Gosling, noting that the studio is doing just that with director Steven Spielberg on his adaptation of "War Horse," the acclaimed play that's currently a sensation on Broadway. "Our artists work with the directors and together they develop visual solutions," he notes.  "In the process, we become an active part of the creative team."
 
"We call this our Visual Development Unit," adds New York-based Head of Production Laney Gradus.  The talents in the department lend their creative skills to filmmakers and agency creatives early in the process, when they're just fleshing out ideas. "You know, the 'post' aspect of visual effects is a somewhat antiquated concept," she elaborates. "What we do is no longer an epilogue or an add-on. We're much more involved earlier on; in a sense, we're bookending jobs now."
 
Another example of the studio's deep involvement in commercials work is the Kia "This or That" spot.  Produced for L.A. agency David & Goliath and directed by Antoine Bardou-Jacquet of Partizan, it features a crew of urban hamsters. They're seen hangin' around an uptown neighborhood known as "Hamsterdam," where they groove on their Kia Soul and compare it to boxy competitors that look like toasters and washing machines.  Actually, they are toasters and washing machines, carrying forlorn hamsters dripping with envy (if a hamster can be shown to reveal such a thing.)

You can drive in this, or you can ride in that: color this hamster green with envy over a Kia.

The spot was honored late last year by the discerning Hollywood Post Alliance, which recognized it for "Outstanding Compositing in a Commercial."  It followed on the heels of a previous Kia spot featuring CGI hamsters seen running in those wire wheels in their cages, symbolizing the tedium of most small-car owners. Meanwhile, cooler hamsters zoomed by in a new Kia Soul. That spot, "Hamsters Goldfish," released in 2009, was directed by Tarsem of @radical.media and also features VFX from Framestore. In "This or That," the challenge was much bigger; the studio had to create 45 photoreal CG hamsters that appear as if in a music video, complete with booty girls and a driving track supplied by Black Sheep's classic 1991 rap 'The Choice is Yours.'
 
Framestore's New York studio has worked on a range of other US TV commercial assignments, collaborating with a number of top directors and agencies on work for such brands as Snickers, GE, Gatorade, LG and Carmax. While much of this is creative-driven, not all of it is; the Gatorade spot, for example, "Ball Girl," is one of those 'how'd they do that?' gems that people are still passing around on the Internet, mistaking it for reality.

Regardless of the platform or distribution channel its work takes to reach viewers, maintaining a high level of production value is a key to the studio's success. "We need to achieve the same level of believability in our commercials effects work as we do in features," says Helen Stanley, Managing Director of Framestore in London. "For example, we've been asked to do 'Benjamin Button'-style digital double work, and to execute that in a thirty-second TV spot.  And the clients want it to look as good as it does in the film.  Well, to do that would have taken months of R&D and a massive expense."  Based on the accrued knowledge the studio has, she notes, "we're able to provide them with some very high-value resources."

Helen Stanley, Managing Director of Framestore in London.

In its commercials, Framestore collaborates closely with both agencies and directors, and increasingly is sending its people on shoots to work with the crew and ensure that clients are getting as much bang for the buck (or the pound) as possible.  "We've been offering VFX supervision on shoots since 1986, when we first started," Stanley says, "because we know it's of huge benefit to our clients." For example, in two recent Carlsberg spots (see "Spaceman" and "Everest") directed by regular Framestore collaborator Danny Kleinman of Rattling Stick for agency Fold 7, the VFX crew was on the set for three weeks.
 

"The whole visual effects shoot experience now is developing at a rapid pace," Stanley continues.  "What we do on set now is no longer just standing there and saying, 'Oh, there aren't enough tracking markers in the frame for us to be able to track it.' There's really an awful lot of input, to the extent that we're actually doing work on set. And this is especially important in today's era of ever-decreasing schedules. It's about being able to collaborate with all the key people, from the director to the agency creatives to the client, before they scatter back to their respective offices. We feel it's creating a higher level of efficiency."
 
Gosling notes that Framestore now gets scripts from agencies around the world, not just in the US or UK.  Its mantra of 'Oscar winning effects across all platforms' now extends to smaller and smaller screens, as it moves beyond its historical cinema and TV platforms.  In turn, the studio is getting more involved in working with clients on digital assets, not just for use in TVCs and web videos, but for elements that appear as part of web site interactions, mobile content, apps, games, even print and out of home.
 
Now, about those aforementioned smartphones. Framestore creates all of Nokia's digital product photography - what used to be called 'pack shots' back in the days when products were actually shot by still photographers.  Now they're all rendered in CG, a trend that advertisers in a wide range of categories have embraced.
 
But Framestore's relationship with the brand goes much deeper.  A while ago, the studio's developers came up with an iPhone app they playfully dubbed "VFX in Your Pocket." It's a cute little way for people to take photos they shoot on their iPhones and have all sorts of pre-programmed visual effects superimposed over them.  You can turn them into zombies, or cover their faces with creepy, crawling bugs. (It's better explained here.)

Sharing expertise goes both ways: the design for this "Hallows" sequence came from studio's commercials unit.

When Nokia and its agency, W+K, hatched plans to create an app that would do pretty much the same thing-allow their smart-phone users to add computer-generated effects to the HD movies they shot on their handheld devices-the studio's success with the "VFX in Your Pocket" app made them the natural partner with which to collaborate on the development of what Nokia is calling FX Studio.
 
That what started as a fun little creative exercise turned into a saleable product on the iTunes store and has now morphed into a deliverable for a major global client is kind of no surprise.  Gosling and Stanley wax poetic about the wisdom of taking just about any asset they can develop and spreading it around, wherever it can best be put to use.  "We like to demonstrate to clients that they can easily extend and repurpose the assets we're creating for them, and that the most efficient way to do this is to plan for it early on," says Gosling.
 
Adds Stanley, "We're really focused now on our digital side. Clients are starting to see that they can take any of the digital assets - from characters to environments to backgrounds - that we create for them and use them in a variety of ways. I think our ability to work cross platform like this is going to be what defines us as we move forward."

Published 1 June, 2011