The Briefing Room

NEW YORK, NY, January 8, 2009 ─ Mantra Design, Creative Group’s design and visual effects boutique, recently polished off a promo package for “Red Bull New Year No Limits Las Vegas,” a thrilling New Year’s Eve show broadcast live on ESPN from Las Vegas on December 31, 2008, just before midnight. For the spot, which promoted scheduled stunts by legendary daredevils Robbie Maddison and Rhys Millen, Mantra created dramatic 3D animations of the feats – giving viewers a taste of the action yet to occur.

While depicting events yet to take place is a common quandary for many promos, Mantra’s task with “New Year No Limits” was made more complex by the sheer magnitude of the stunts: Maddison was to jump his bike 120 feet into the air, landing on top of the 96-foot-high replica Arc de Triomphe in front of the Paris Las Vegas hotel/casino complex. Millen, meanwhile, vowed to become the first person to complete and land a backflip with an off-road truck, a feat that required the truck to travel a distance of 80 feet at a height of 50 feet.

After running a motion test, Mantra determined the best way to convey these dramatic actions was through one continuous camera move. It would start in normal speed, follow the action and go into super slow-mo at various points within the action. As Mantra VP Creative Director Fred Salkind puts it, “It was basically a visual study of the beautiful motion and the pure insanity of the task.”

Mantra teams at the company’s New York and Beijing offices employed the motion test animations to develop full 3D renders of the truck used by Millen, Maddison’s motorcycle and a rider. These were then supplied to Ray Rothaug, a senior editor at Creative Group (which assisted Mantra on the promo), who intercut them with footage from similar events from previous “New Year No Limits” shows during the editing stage.

Cutting up the animation further heightened the drama of the promo, adding a more realistic look and feel. Because the original motion test was one continuous action and editorialized into many different scenes, however, the duration, angle and motion constantly changed during the edit. This required a high level of coordination among staff at the Mantra New York City and Beijing offices.

“At the end of each day, [Mantra Design Senior Producer] Jennie Sharp would upload the cut for Beijing to start to break down the original [whole] scene and start animating the individual scenes,” notes Salkind. “Because of the 13-hour time difference between New York and Beijing, revised scenes were rendered and uploaded from China for the editor in New York to place into the cut the following day. Basically, while we were sleeping, Beijing was revising the animation and rendering. This allowed us to have overnight turnaround on the revisions.”

For the backdrop of Las Vegas in the spot, Mantra created a hyper-realistic rendering of the settings for Maddison and Millen’s stunts, the Paris Las Vegas and Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, respectively. These settings, in addition to the motorcycle and truck previously mentioned, were created by Mantra’s Beijing staff, using Maya software from Autodesk. Mantra’s New York office handled the compositing with After Effects, performed the offline editorial in Avid and the final HD conform in Autodesk Smoke.

As for Millen and Maddison, they fulfilled their promises on New Year’s Eve, with Maddison leaping to the top of the Arc de Triomphe and Millen taking his truck through its record-breaking motions. All of this took place in front of 300,000 awed spectators, and millions more ESPN viewers – who were no doubt tuning in thanks to Mantra’s spectacular promo animations.

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About Mantra Design

Mantra Design is a premier design and visual effects boutique located in New York City’s Flatiron District. Its talented team of graphics and VFX artists are behind some of today’s most visually compelling broadcast and event design offerings including the 2008 Grammy Awards Show, the MTV Music Awards, and various show packages. Founded by Creative Group in 2007, it offers motion design, visual effects, creative editorial, event design and production for its clients, many of which are among the world’s best known brands, including CBS, ESPN, CNN, Saatchi & Saatchi, MTV Networks, Nickelodeon, History, and USA Network.

About Creative Group

Creative Group is a leading, full-service post production facility specializing in nonlinear, linear and HD editing compositing, visual effects, color correction, digital intermediates, DVD duplication and sound design/5.1 audio post mixing for the broadcast, film and DVD markets. The New York City-based Creative Group first opened its doors in 1993 with an imaginative and award-winning team of artists. The company has since expanded its industry presence to include Mantra, its Manhattan-based design and visual effects boutique, as well as its Bristol, CT location. The company has grown internationally, as well, to include facilities overseas in Beijing and Dublin. Working with such high profile clients as The Walt Disney Company, General Electric, Viacom, Time Warner, Paramount, NBC Universal and Momentum, Creative

Group prides itself in its mission to offer an all-inclusive hub for value-added creative services. This affords clients the ability to differentiate themselves in today’s cluttered multimedia environment.

For More Information, Contact:

Sarah Stanfield

D. Pagan Communications

631-659-2309, ext. 16

sarahs@dpagan.com