How’d They Do That?!
The assignment: a banking commercial. The objective: promote the bank’s new premiere services and refinancing services. Seems pretty straightforward. In fact, given that most banking or financial services commercials on television today seem just that; the challenges for this project were not obvious -- at first. Shoot it, edit it and get it out to air. But this particular ad for Webster Bank was in no way straightforward. Which is why renown editor and VFX artist, and owner of New York City’s Formation an Editing Laboratory, Sasa Jokic was called in.
From his first meeting with the ad agency, Averett Free Ginsberg, Sasa immediately knew the spots -- "Premier" and "Refinancing"-- would be complex and challenging. In the spots, 24 actors hold individual signs that flip to create a seamless graphic, that when viewed as a whole contain images and messages to promote Webster's banking services. But here’s the catch - each time the actors flip their signs in near-unison, an entirely new message and image appears. Sasa’s first reaction; each spot would have 7 sign flips equaling 168 individual elements to motion track, light and composite. Suddenly, a seemingly simple banking commercial is a huge VFX challenge!
"I knew right away, from looking at the boards, that no matter how well the footage was shot, that this would be a huge amount of tracking and compositing work. Tracking was really the most important part of the project and the main reason I was able to confidently take on this large job was because I had Imagineer Systems’ mocha and its planar tracker in my tool kit. There is nothing like it in the market!"
How He Did It
Using a combination of Apple Final Cut Pro for editing, mocha for tracking and After Effects for compositing, Sasa was able to seamlessly complete these challenging VFX heavy spots on time and on budget.
While a traditional tracking system might have required a lot of manual frame by frame correction, mocha excelled at tracking the flipping cards, no matter how much motion blur he was seeing. Sasa continued, "I was able to track many of the card flips at the same time, quickly get the tracking data into After Effects and focus on the compositing. While the whole post process -- editorial, color correction and effects -- took more than a month, if it weren’t for mocha, this job would have been impossible.”
"I’ve known about Imagineer's products for years, but always thought of them as high-end untouchable tools for large facilities. But when they launched mocha, I realized how accessible their planar technology actually was for a shop like mine. Now, I can offer the highest quality compositing services from a desktop environment. I think that the decision to package the planar tracker as an affordable utility was very wise and makes sense for smaller companies and individuals like myself."
"There is nothing out there like mocha," Sasa concludes.
About Sasa Jokic
Sasa Jokic, new york based independent editor and VFX artist. His company, Formation an Editing Laboratory, inc. (http://formationedit.com )was founded in 2004. Formation partners with clients and agencies to deliver among the industry’s highest end creative commercial editorial and visual effects services.
Sasa has a Masters of Art in film and video editing, grew up and educated in Serbia. He has been working in NYC post production since 1996.
Tools: Avid, FCP, Apple Shake, Adobe After Effects, SynthEyes (3D tracking tool), Imagineer Systems' mocha.
To view the Webster Bank spot, please visit http://formationedit.com/?p=5
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