Animal Logic’s Emerald Cities

In ‘Emerald Cities’, a Kaiser Permanente spot directed by Biscuit Filmworks’ Noam Murro for agency Campbell Ewald, Animal Logic was called up to integrate live action and miniature trees, buildings and matte painted elements to form a thriving urban landscape. fxguide talks to visual effects supervisor Nick Ponzoni about the spot.

Click here for the final spot

Click here for before and after video

09Oct/ec/kaiser_ec_5fxg: What was Animal Logic’s brief?

Ponzoni: The main brief was that this city had to look like it had been living with these amazing trees as long as the city itself had existed. It was meant to show a symbiotic relationship between the city and nature. In order to create that, we had to be very careful in terms of things like how much we cracked the ground and the placement of the trees – just so it didn’t obstruct too much from what was going on within our frame. It needed to look somewhat magical, but not fake. It needed to be a beautiful spot without being too stylised.


fxg: What concept work or artwork did you draw your effects from?

Ponzoni: We had some rough Photoshop comps from the agency, which depicted cityscapes with massive redwoods in it. From that we started compiling a whole heap of reference of redwoods, cities with big trees in them and large cities with nice frames and lighting. We paid particular attention to the kind of lighting you get in a forest. Then we did a whole heap of concept frames and put together a style board for the director, Noam Murro. Then we moved into storyboarding with Noam.


09Oct/ec/kaiser_ec_10fxg: Which approaches did you consider for the visual effects work?

Ponzoni: To begin with, we considered everything. Initially we were looking at CG trees. In the end we decided to stick with matte painting elements, live action elements and miniatures. Each frame determined the methodology we used. So we boarded everything, then worked out which approach we’d take for the particular frame – a miniature, an aerial plate, a live action element plate shot against green – whatever it required.


09Oct/ec/kaiser_ec_8fxg: Did you consider using any of the CG-tree generating programs that are out there?

Ponzoni: We wanted to keep everything as real elements, which also let us keep it all cost effective. Having CG trees would have allowed us to do a few camera moves, and we discussed that upfront, but the nature of the spot was more of an observational one. So that kind of dictated the technique as well.


09Oct/ec/kaiser_ec_9fxg: What ended up being shot as live action?

Ponzoni: We had a number of practical trunks integrated into the ground. That helped Noam and the DP frame every shot and choreograph the action around it. It also helped us in comp with reflections and shadows. We used some bluescreen silos in the background sometimes as well as witches hats. With the miniatures, we found it was hard getting detail for the frames we had planned, so we used them for the aerial shots travelling over the city/canopy. That helped with changing perspective. Then we textured the miniatures over with tree plates shot later.


09Oct/ec/kaiser_ec_4fxg: What were some of the digital techniques used in the spot?

Ponzoni: After the city shoot, we printed out each frame so we’d know what to get for the matte painting work. Then we went up to some redwood forests in Santa Cruz and got a whole heap of reference with all the right angles. Then we brought that back for the matte painters. For the aerial shots, basically the only tools we used were Inferno and Photoshop. We’d do a 3D track on everything and then track in the textures over the miniatures. So we had to split up layers of branches to create parallax movement as we’re going over those trees. Then we put the fog mist over that. Finally, it was a matter of compositing it all, adding movement through the trees using warping and putting in a few live action branches to give the matte paintings a little bit of life.


09Oct/ec/kaiser_ec_2fxg: I think when I look at the spot, it’s not immediately apparent how it was done. What kind of attention did you have to give to the integration of all the elements?

Ponzoni: In terms of integration, even once we received the matte paintings there was a lot of layering and atmos that we added over the top. It also involved carefully choosing each element to sit in the scenes. The one thing we had to be careful of was lighting and how much was filtering through into the streetscape. We had to be careful of the time of day each street was shot and that there wasn’t harsh sunlight going all over our foreground characters so that we wouldn’t have to put dappled lighting all over them. We had a lot of reference and a lot of plates shot, so we had to make good choices. I think half the battle is matching lighting and then you just work it in the comp.