Don’t Drive Naughty, Drive Nice

Cuddly toy visualisation, LED screens and a strong message.

A couple of years before making the move to Los Angeles I spent the summer working with the team over at Framestore LA. I was assigned to help the VFX Supervisor on an Australian safe driving campaign. I was tasked with planning some interesting shots while keeping a large LED screen framed up. A workflow that has gained a lot of traction during the global pandemic.

Here is a peek behind the scenes talking about all the methodologies to bring the commercial to life. I was pleased to have provided some support to help Framestore to get this spot made, the beauty of visualisation work is that you can really play with ideas and be part of the creative process.

I’m always happy to receive storyboards when producing visualisation, I find that often the director has already decided on the ideas and you don’t have to waste time reinventing the wheel, you can simply start exploring the 3D space from these 2D drawings. We found out quickly that certain camera moves were revealing more than the LED screen could cover.

To help the Supervisor and the crew I produced a couple of tech visualisations which showed the two camera moves which at the time the director wanted to explore further when on set.

My workflow for creating the shots is to try and work as quickly as possible, frame up very simplistic camera moves and to create all shots with around 100 frames in length. The idea is to spend the time crafting the compositions, seeing how the 2D space translates into our 3D set and to use the editing process to find the timings using an assortment of time warps and retimes.