Time Based Arts has completed the effects work on this commercial for Peter Jackson’s King Kong ride at Universal Studios Holllywood.
The ride itself is the replacement for the original King Kong Experience that burnt down in the fire that destroyed a huge swath of the Universal back-lot in 2008. It’s a fully immersive 3D experience where visitors are surrounded on all sides by imagery (whilst riding on the Universal tour bus) projected on two 200-foot wide screens.
The agency David&Goliath in LA tasked Minivegas with creating an interesting and arresting spot that continued the theme of there existing campaign which focussed on the reaction of the people on the ride.
The premise for the commercial was a simple one, that is to watch someone age from a 12 year old boy through to an 80 year old man. Of course like most simple ideas it relied on a very complex execution to pull it off.
Sheldon Gardner was on set in LA to supervise the shoot. We looked a number of methodologies for executing the effect. Our primary concern was that we would not be able to get the characters to match there head movements and therefore have no consistent alignment through which to transition.
We looked at shooting the heads locked off then taking these textures and projecting them onto a 3D geometry to give them the same movement in post. We tested this and felt that it created a very “skinned” and flattened result and lost the naturalistic light play on the faces.
In the end we decided that it would be best to capture the footage in the most realistic manner (allowing for the most natural acting) with a head and shoulders portrait shot of each actor. This was shot on the new RED Epic high-speed at 5k. From here we worked hard on the alignment through a painstaking process of retiming, stabilisation and distortion. Rather than thinking of it as morphing from character A to B then B to C etc we created long overlaps, that is, morphs which in turn were morphed. This created a much more seamless journey through the four actors.
The following quicktime visually describes the fundamentals of the process:
Adam Burnett worked alongside the 2D to create the CGI beard that grows and ungrows on our characters face during the transition. This was hugely complicated by the fact that we were constantly evolving the transitional head and therefore due to time pressures Adam would have to perpetually rework the tracking of the 3D beard. It’s a great result though and really provides another layer of authenticity to the ageing.
Just to add to the fun the entire shot was posted at 4k in order that we could apply a digital pullout at the end.
It was certainly a very technical job but equally a very rewarding one.
Client: Universal Studios Hollywood
Agency: David&Goliath LA
Production Company: Minivegas
Director: Luc Schurgers
Producer: Maarten Boon
Time Based Arts
Supervision: Sheldon Gardner
Flame: Sheldon Gardner, Mike Skrgatic, James Allen
Flame Assist: Mike Aveling, Prince Yiadom
3D: Adam Burnett, Richard Endean