Venomocity
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 5:36PM Last year I had the great fun of working with the Phoenix-based agency Riester on a series of three anti-smoking spots for the Arizona Bureau of Tobacco Education and Prevention. The finished spots were held up briefly, but finally airing in Arizona. Here are all three—click through to view them in fancy YouTube HD (link is below and to the right of the movie)!
You may notice that some of the footage appears to be hand-cranked. In fact, the entire spot was shot on the Panavision Genesis, a camera that quite prominently lacks a hand crank. So my DP (the brilliant Carlos Veron) and I shot the hand-crank sections at an even 50 fps (the Genesis's max), and then editor Gregory Nussbaum (of Pictures in a Row) and I ran the shots through the very same hand-crank After Effects project that I included in The DV Rebel's Guide.
Of course, some of the hand-cranked shots contain visual effects (supervised by Ryan Tudhope). As I told the crew at the kickoff meeting, it's not a Stu job unless we're doing something annoying with time. Ryan's animators actually worked at 50 fps on the original plate, and then rendered only the frames called for by the hand-crank retiming curve. This allowed them to be as surprised and annoyed by the hand-crank effect as the live action crew!
By shooting at 50 fps, we got smoother 24p results from the hand-crank effect, as it had more frames to pull from. You can do the same if your camera has a 60p or 60i mode (50 for PAL), as most do. All of this is explained in The Guide.
Carlos also shot wide-open much of the time. The combination of Super35 sensor, overcranking, and wide dynamic range (since we'd be shooting outdoors in direct sun) meant that the Genesis was really the only digital camera I felt we could use for this campaign. We almost didn't get one, which would have meant resorting to, gasp, film!
Orphanage colorist Aaron Rhodes graded the spots in Film Master, creating LUTs that the VFX artists used to preview their work with propper color. We used much the same workflow as we did on The Spirit.
These spots have everything I love, performance, cinematography, and a worthwhile message. I'm proud of them and delighted that I can finally share them with you. You can also watch them in their native habitat on the very cool web site developed to anchor the campaign: venomocity.com.
Reader Comments (20)
Glad you're back!
Super Cool, Stu Moe Dee.
Stu,
How do you get your youTube videos to look so good? Mine always look like crap. Even the ones in HD.
Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. I used to lament the production value and weak writing on PSA's (and with some AdCouncil PSA's, I still do). But this is great work. I can only hope that if I ever make something that looks this good, and get it in front of someone like Stu, he can ask, "Who taught you how to shoot this stuff?"
To which I'll answer, "You, all right? I learned it by watching you!!!"
Very nice Stu. Sent me straight back to The Guide and digging out that afx project.
Outstanding ads Stu, some of the best PSAs I've ever seen.
Looks like you had a lot of fun with this project. Thanks for sharing.
nice camera, I would definitely appreciate any "how to" on the compositing/matchmoving part...a few crumbs:)
Stu,
I guess we are all addicts ... FOR YOU STU!!!
Glad you're back, and thank god for the "DV Rebels Guide"
MORE info please, we surrender.
Laurence
Love the adds Stu! I've been trying to come up with a legitimate 8mm preset for AE and I think your hand cranking preset from the Guide is the piece that I've been missing!
I'd really like to hear your comments on the 5D Mk II...You being the mastermind behind the original Magic Bullet, can you suggest a decent process for converting 30p to 24p, if any?
Also...when do we get to see your 5D "kung-fu subway short"? :)
Welcome back Stu.
Nice, those ads look great. The hand crank effect is very cool, it has certainly got me interested.
Careful Benji, Stu has made it clear on a number of occasions that there is no valid way to convert 30fps to 24fps.
It is a pity that the 5D mkII does not have a 50fps 'PAL' mode, at least then you could drop 1/2 the frames and slow it down by 4% to get 24fps.
Great work. I love to see stuff like this.
Stu ,
my favorites in order :
1. "school's out"
2. "First time"
3. "wakeup call"
now every time i see someone smokin' i think about your ADs
Great Job , Love ur work :)
Definitely "First Time." I like the way it seems to grow inside and then sprout as soon as she goes to throw it away.
As a smoker, Wake up call is spot on. That's me every morning. Doesn't matter if my wife is screaming, kids crying, or late for work. So many PSA's don't understand the problem they are trying to fix, that spot showed understanding. It felt like it was written by a smoker, or an ex-smoker.
First time on the other hand is the standard carebear PSA that makes me want to vomit. Showing people hooked on the first puff is about as realistic as the window scene in Reefer Madness. So file this one as a miss.
Schools out hits somewhere in the middle for me.
Visually they are all quite attractive and grab your attention. Good job overall.
I'd love to see some vfx breakdowns if you got em.
Wakeup Call seems the most apt for smokers. Its my flatmate. Every morning.
Hey Stu,
Wakeup call is my choice for the best one. The way that the light plays, defocus/blurs, and the CC all work really well for the waking up feeling.
I know that you were going for a consistent look, but feel that the other two were very slightly over cc'd. I'd really love to see a cut of these where the cc changes when they take that first puff.
I agree that the 'first time' message is off point.
I've had to watch them a bunch of times now looking for all the hand crank sections, and still don't know if I've caught them all.
They're beautiful... and so inspiring!!
Thank you for all you help Stu. ADHS and RIESTER is very proud of this campaign. Checkout Venomocity.com people. Get the word out to the kids. Tobacco addiction is a serious issue.
Enter the layer of addiction and explore for yourself.