Christian's a Winner in Cannes 2008!
Golden Square completed post work on two entertaining MasterCard spots, one of which "Studious Pupil" won an award at the Young Directors Showcase in Cannes 2008.
MasterCard Studious Pupil
The idea behind this quirky commercial for McCann Erickson New York was to promote a unique competition for MasterCard customers.
Working with a great script about a man with an overactive eye, director Christian Bevilacqua developed his treatment with inspiration from the photographs of Andreas Gursky. Shot entirely on green screen in London, the Golden Square team built the backgrounds in Photoshop and Flame from stills shot in New York by the director. The images were worked up to heighten their natural symmetry and then separated into virtual planes in Flame to create parallax when the camera moves were applied. Subtle lighting changes, birds, fog and extra people were all added to help bring the backgrounds to life. The hero’s wandering eye was created in Flame by building a 3D eye which was texture mapped with an image of the actor's eye. This allowed the eye to move wherever the director chose with minimal adjustment. Finally, a strong filmic grade was applied in Flame to bring it all together.
MasterCard Seven Wonders
The Seven Wonders viral was part of a series of priceless gift prizes available through MasterCard. The idea was for the viewer to enter into a magical Phileas Fogg’esque popup book that would transport you around the world to the Seven Wonders of the World.
A series of popup book scenes were shot on HD in the studio and passed on to the Golden Square team to enhance and bring to life. Flame was used to manage and distribute the shots, while After Effects and Maya were used to assemble around 50% of the scenes before handing back to Flame for grading and delivery. The challenge was to deliver a huge amount of treated shots within a very tight schedule; this was managed using a combination of Flame, 3D particles, stop frame animation, and filmed footage.
Director, Christian Bevilacqua adds, “These jobs were a really tough post production challenge. Not only was it a tricky post job, there was also a tight schedule too. I loved my experience at Golden Square and felt that they had a really good creative grasp of what we were after right from the start. They have a good pool of creative talent, that could take ideas and roll with it, as well as being great to work with.”