Shade Steps Into the Spotlight with Time Warner
Where do you turn, when you feel the need for speed? How do you keep up with your cohorts, especially on treacherous terrain, taking on futuristic foes in the heat of battle?
As we learn in a spot breaking August 3rd, the answer is Time Warner Cable - and Roadrunner, with its free power boost. “Lag,” the first commercial in Time Warner’s new campaign, offers a visually arresting depiction of videogame-style graphics, as a pair of teens strive to keep the heat turned up via their cable connection. The campaign, created via Uniworld/NY, was directed by spot, feature, and new media filmmaker Jim Sonzero, with visual effects by Shade.
As the spot begins, one’s initial reaction is to wonder, “How did they get the characters to look so REAL?
In fact, the characters ARE real, shot in live action on the RED camera at Vasquez Rocks, by DP Ekkehart Pollack. These images came to resemble videogame graphics thanks to the skill and talent of Bryan Godwin’s Shade VFX, and its close collaboration with Sonzero - who has garnered recent acclaim as the Cinematics Director for smash-hit Resident Evil 5.
“Bryan is a genius,” Sonzero says. “The guys worked around the clock to make this happen and they blew us away. The world has changed and the fx have to be done quickly, so a company needs to devise solutions that work within the imposed limitations. Shade gets the new paradigm and knows how to get it done.”
Formerly VFX supervisor/director at Motion Theory, Godwin is an established and acclaimed talent. He recently founded Shade, and the Time Warner project is the company’s first national campaign. The company helmed all aspects of post production, including teaming up with guest editor Bob Mori and executing color design and timing with colorist Steve Rodriguez of CO3. De Motu handled graphic design for the campaign.
Both Shade and De Motu are members of Red Magnet, a unique creative solutions collective that builds a bridge among experts in their fields. The project came to Shade via Red Magnet’s Shira Boardman, who had bid with Sonzero in the past. “I knew that by bringing Jim into the fold and introducing him to Bryan, things would flow naturally from there.”
“It was about teamwork from the jump,” Uniworld CD Vann Graves points out. “The guys at Shade were blazing to put stuff in front of us so quickly - almost instantaneously. We’d be trading sketches up until the shoot. It was a fun ride. To have a beautiful piece like this created, especially when times are so challenging economically, is great. A few years ago, this might have been a Superbowl spot with an astronomical budget.”
“This is not the type of board you see too often, in terms of the filmic quality, the creative, and so forth,” says Godwin. “We came in very early on to do pre-vis, because the total turnaround was extremely tight. It was a one-day shoot, so we wanted to be prepared and make sure we got what we needed.”
“The shoot day was fun, challenging, and hot. The actors had amazing wardrobe, the production design was awesome, and Ekkehart shot some of the best footage we’ve ever seen,” Godwin says. “The logical assumption based on the turnaround was that there was no time for any VFX,” Godwin recalls. As it happens, Shade delivered CG vehicles, tracking, compositing, weapons - “a little bit of every special effects challenge that you could imagine.”
“Shade was the perfect partner because Bryan understands the videogame language and was quick to create extremely cool components for the piece, like an awesome HUD, a killer space ship and beautiful digital matte paintings,” Sonzero says. “They have the skill and craft to do whatever is necessary to execute a great project…essentially, we went after this together and without them I wouldn’t have been able to pull it off.”
“The direction, cinematography, and VFX combined perfectly to create a cinematic experience that felt like the next generation of gaming,” concludes Uniworld Art Director Heather Han. “And who knows, there’s always room for a sequel.”
Project Credits:
Client: Time Warner Cable
Spots Title: “Lag”
Air Date: August 3, 2009
Agency: Uniworld/NY
ACD/Copywriter: Shameka Barbosa
Art Director: Heather Han
Copywriter: Dan Macena
CD: Vann Graves
EP: Kimberly Edwards
Prod Company: Newhouse
Director: Jim Sonzero
DP: Ekkehart Pollack
EP: Heidi Nolting
Post/Effects: Shade,De Motu, Red Magnet
EP: Shira Boardman
Lead VFX: Bryan Godwin
CG Supervisor: Dan Dixon
Senior Compositor: Andreas Jablonka
Compositor: Kevin Ellis
Compositor: Charles Meredith
FX Technical Director: Andrew Byrne
Technical Director: Ben Fiske
VFX Producer: Sheri Patterson
Post Producer: Jon Jacobson
Designer: De Motu
Editorial: Shade VFX
Editor: Bob Mori
Telecine: Company 3
Colorist: Steve Rodriguez
Music: Human
Shoot Location: Vasquez Rocks
