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Ultrabland, the flatiron-based editorial, design, and music boutique with a stellar reputation for crafting high-end promos that support a network’s brand while providing a fresh creative perspective, recently turned its storytelling skills to a new image campaign for USA Network.

The promos showcase the quirky talents and hobbies of an off-beat collection of individuals, including a man who publishes a magazine based on random scraps of paper he finds in people’s trash, a woman with the ability to balance virtually any object on her chin, two men who race riding lawnmowers, and a Latino Elvis impersonator.

USA Network’s vice president of brand creative Lorenzo DeGuttadauro and creative director Christina Hedrick provided creative direction for and oversaw the “Show Us Your Character’ campaign, which was directed by Chelsea Pictures’ Larry Frey and shot by DP David Morrison. Its concept is an extension of the network’s 2005 “Characters Welcome” re-branding campaign, which features Emmy Award-winner Tony Shalhoub of Monk and the clairvoyant child from the hit series,The 4400.

“Show Us Your Character” showcases an eclectic array of one-of-a-kind real people profiled in a series of spots meant to inspire viewers to visit the showusyourcharacter.com Web site, a unique Internet destination where people from across the country can show what makes them a character. The site invites viewers to submit a home video documenting their own remarkable talents and compete for a chance to star in an upcoming promo in this rather unconventional campaign.

“It was fantastic working on this project. USA really reached out to do something fresh and new,” says Ultrabland owner/editor, Bennett Killmer. “The material they shot was great, and their creative direction gave us an opportunity to cut really intriguing and off-center spots.”

Killmer, and Ultrabland editors Victor Masnyj and Jessica Rosa, cut nine spots in total, collaborating with USA Network senior writer/producer Heather Weiss and writer/producer Lori Moretz. In addition, Masnyj also cut an overview contest spot featuring a number of the characters.

“The real challenge,” says Killmer, “was that despite the fact that each person’s story, and therefore the editing style of each promo, was very different, we needed to create a cohesive campaign that made all the promos feel like part of an overall package. Davey, the spot about the trash guy, for instance, was more conversational, while the break-dancer was a music-based performance. But they all had to maintain a certain consistency from spot to spot.”

Masnyj concurs. “Some characters were more self-explanatory than others. They were so out there that you didn’t need to explain what makes them characters. You just had to put up what they do and try to cut the material in the most interesting way.”

One of the most challenging promos for Masnyj was Davey, the Ann Arbor, Michigan dumpster diver who’s shown plying his trade in an alley. “It required quite a bit of background for viewers to understand that he digs through trash, finds people’s notes and publishes a magazine of this found material,” Masnyj explains. “It’s hard to imagine how that’s possible until you hear Davey actually read an excerpt from the magazine. You have to find a way to give it context in a very short setup, while still keeping the spot interesting and intriguing.”

For Killmer, Mowers, which features two men who race slightly modified riding lawnmowers through a dirt-track obstacle course, was representative of many of the spots. “Director Larry Frey shot such interesting footage that there were infinite editorial options,” he reports. “Because we had so many good storylines, we were able to create various versions during the editorial process, to help us figure out which single aspect was the most interesting to focus on.”

“We could easily have cut 10 different spots for some of the characters, and they all would have been great and totally unique,” Masnyj agrees. “So much good material had to be left out. The only negative to a project like this is what we couldn’t put in the spots because of their lengths.”

Each promo ends with a showusyourcharacter.com tag and interlocking USA Network logo, which Ultrabland crafted to work with the network’s existing branding.

“Cutting the campaign was a really great experience,” declares Masnyj. “The footage was beautiful, it was well directed and produced — and the subjects couldn’t have been more interesting. It was fun to use different editing skills and styles to give each spot a unique tone and make each of the personalities come across as a real character.”

About Ultrabland
Ultrabland is a uniquely specialized creative boutique dedicated to the art of creating high-end promos. Its award-winning talent provides seamlessly integrated editorial, design, and music services to some of the industry’s most prestigious networks, including HBO, Showtime, NBC, CBS, Nickelodeon, Cinemax, Sundance Channel, MTV, USA, Lifetime, VH1, CourtTV, and Sci Fi Channel.

For more information, contact Ultrabland at 646.638.2830 or visit www.ultrabland.com.

Full credit list:
CLIENT: USA Network’
CAMPAIGN: “Show Us Your Character”
SPOT TITLES: Davey, Elvez, Beauty Queen Ventriloquist, Mowers, Breakdancer, Chin Balancer, Snake Man, Party Planner, Dr. Ruehl, Contest…
NETWORK: USA Network, NY: VP, Brand Creative: Lorenzo DeGuttadauro, Creative Director: Christina Hedrick, Director, Production & Marketing: Margee Hocking, Sr. Writer/Producer: Heather Weiss, Writer/Producer: Lori Moretz…
PRODUCTION CO.: Chelsea Pictures, NY: Director: Larry Frey, DP: David Morrison, Head of Production: John LaChappelle, Producer: Melonie Kastman

EDITORIAL & DESIGN CO: Ultrabland, NY: Editors: Victor Masnyj (Davey, Elvez, Beauty Queen Ventriloquist,Dr. Ruehl, Contest), Bennett Killmer (Mowers, Breakdancer, Chin Balancer, Snake Man), Jessica Rosa (Party Planner): Designers: Bennett Killmer, Ryan Bramwell, Executive Producer: Heidi Bayer

AUDIO CO: Audio Department/NY: Mixers: Bob Chapman, Mike Garatty…
TELECINE CO.: Company 3, NY: Colorists: John Bonta, Billy Gabor…
MUSIC CO.: Various stock libraries.

Popularity: 3% [?]

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Toronto-based entertainment studio C.O.R.E. helped redefine Hell on 2926 screens this weekend with their work on SILENT HILL as it crept its way to the top of the box office, estimated at over $20 million across North America.

The eerie and deserted town of SILENT HILL draws a young mother desperate to find a cure for her only child’s illness. It is soon clear this place is unlike anywhere she’s ever been, it’s smothered by fog, inhabited by a variety of strange beings and periodically overcome by a living Darkness that literally transforms everything it touches.

“C.O.R.E.’s 250 shots created for the movie’s multiple realities spanned the gamut of visual effects in terms of variety,” says Kyle Menzies, VP and Co founder of C.O.R.E. “We created the digital fog and ash that blankets the cursed town. 2D duplication of creatures and compositing, as well as 3D creature work, were employed to achieve the effects in the ‘Grey Child’ sequence. 3D birds, smoke, warping and manipulation of
practical creature suits, as well as 3D and 2D environments, all factored into the mix.”

Continuing on a less-terrifying path, the VFX division is in production on FIREHOUSE DOG for 20th Century Fox / New Regency, KILLSHOT for the Weinstein Company and a dramatic 10 part mini-series based on the early reign of king Henry VIII for Showtime Networks THE TUDORS.

C.O.R.E. is a leading creator of digital visual effects and animation for feature film and television. Founded in 1994 by Bob Munroe, John Mariella, Kyle Menzies and actor/director/writer William Shatner, C.O.R.E. has successfully built four divisions with a staff of more than 300 people: C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures, C.O.R.E. Toons, C.O.R.E. Film Productions and C.O.R.E. Feature Animation.

Popularity: 3% [?]

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For the fourth year, Blur Studio created the on-air show packaging for Nickelodeon’s Kids’ Choice Awards, helping the enormously popular event, now in its 19th year, to its highest ratings ever. Blur’s design team collaborated with Bob Bain Productions, which produces the show for Nickelodeon, using its expertise in branding for young audiences to deliver a high-energy, kid-centric graphics package. The results were phenomenal as the show was the number one telecast for kids 6-11 during its broadcast week, the top cable program for tweens 9-14 and attracted nearly 27 million votes from viewers—an all-time record.

Branding for kids and tweens programming is among Blur Studio’s specialties. In addition to its work on Kids’ Choice, it has teamed with Bob Bain Productions for several other youth-oriented awards shows, including The Teen Choice Awards and The Billboard Music Awards. Additionally, Blur has been a perennial contributor to award-winning branding for Kids! WB. The studio also produced an award-winning television campaign for Nickelodeon’s first theatrical feature, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.

“We have been working with Bob Bain in carefully developing the Kids’ Choice brand and it’s obviously been working as the audience for the show has been growing each year,” observed Blur Studio creative director Jennifer Miller. “We know how to speak to this age group. We understand the strategy, the energy and the attitude of these young viewers.”

The quality of Blur’s collaboration with Bob Bain Productions grows with each project, enabling them to continually turn out compelling design concepts. “Their creativity is unparalleled and their interaction with us as producers is so smooth, it’s as if they are our in-house graphics department,” observed Bob Bain producer Paul Flattery. “In the dozens of shows we’ve done together, they have always astonished us with their freshness and work ethic. They are our first call, our ‘go-to’ company and long may it stay that way.”

Blur’s colorfully eclectic graphic package included the show open, as well as winners graphics and headers. The studio’s design team worked closely with Bob Bain’s set designers to establish a consistent, integrated look, reflecting the 2006 theme, “rock ‘n’ roll circus.” “We were inspired by Fillmore rock posters from the sixties,” explained Blue Studio creative director/designer Norn Kittiaksorn. “Our concept was to make celebrities like Jack Black and Chris Rock look like rock stars, taking the two-dimensional rock poster aesthetic and bringing it to life in dynamic 3D space.”

The design concept also incorporated psychedelic patterns and cheeky circus-vernacular typography and icons, including a giant pointing finger that was used as a signature graphic. Other elements including the familiar Nickelodeon orange blimp and green “slime” were used to tie the design into the station’s overall branding. “It has the same attitude as Nick’s brand—it’s irreverent, hip and someone always gets slimed,” said Kittiaksorn. “We’re glad to be part of that tradition.”

About Blur Studio
The Oscar-nominated Blur Studio provides award-winning broadcast design, brand positioning and end-to-end production services for numerous show packages, main titles, promotional and identity campaigns, and branding campaigns as well as theatrical promotions. Recent credits include Intel Corporation’s Rebranding Campaign, CBS’ Daytime Image Campaign, TVGuide’s Reality Chat, ABC’s 2005 Emmy Awards, NBC’s The Apprentice, Fox Television’s Billboard Music Awards and Teen Choice Awards, and the current network campaign for Kids’ WB! Blur Studio is located at 589 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291. For more information, call (310) 581-8848.

Credits include:
Bob Bain Productions:

Executive Producer
Bob Bain

Producer/ Writer
Paul Flattery

Blur Studio:

Creative Director / Designer:
Norn Kittiaksorn

Executive Creative Consultant:
Jennifer Miller

Producer:
Beth Elder

Lead Animator:
Adam Swaab

Animatoravid Lewandowski

Popularity: 3% [?]

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S4 Studios LLC (www.s4studios.com) has announced that it has teamed with Sunwoo Entertainment to produce six half-hour episodes of Wild Animal Baby, a mixed-media 3D animation, flash animation and live action series for the non-profit National Wildlife Federation, based in Washington, DC. The twelve 11-minute episodes of the preschooler-targeted series are being distributed on home video via the NWF website (www.nwf.org/wildanimalbaby). Negotiations for a distributor are pending. Wild Animal Baby marks S4’s second longform project, the other being Cartoon Network’s The Groovenians.

The series is based on the NWF’s enormously popular magazine, Wild Animal Baby, winner of the EDPress Distinguished Achievement Award and the Folio Celebration of Excellence Gold Award, and features the characters introduced in the magazine, Sandy the Salamander, Skip the Rabbit, Izzy the Owl and Rosie the Otter. Wild Animal Baby the series, serves as a preschoolers’ introduction into the natural sciences, by promoting literacy, simple math concepts, and developing motor skills by imitating real and animated animals through interactive activities, songs and games.

In each 11-minute episode of the series, a mystery is presented to the characters– a sound they don’t recognize, an animal behavior they can’t explain– and with the motto of “Let’s Explore!” they set out on an adventure to solve the problem, discovering a lot along the way about the world around them. “The show introduces kids to the idea of deductive reasoning, which the characters use as a logic tool to complete their own adventures. The idea is that kids at home will go out, explore, touch things and wonder about them; that’s a very important part of this series,” says co-director Larry Le Francis of S4 Studios. “For example, in the first show, the babies have their picnic basket raided and they find some paw prints. In due course, they learn that it was a bear along with some elementary facets of their behavior, using actual bear footage that’s intercut with the animation.”

S4’s Art Director/Storyboard Director Dale Hendrickson worked closely with the Sunwoo Entertainment team of Producers Jae Woo Park and Brian Doell to adapt the print characters for 3D, with animation being done in Maya 7.0. “The original vision was for more of a 2D graphic look, but as designs went back and forth, it got pulled more into the 3D world,” Hendrickson relates. “The animation was beautiful and the show really captures a great balance of fun and teaching simple ideas to a preschool audience.”

Le Francis adds, “Wild Animal Baby is a big step forward in S4 Studios’ move into longform and original content. We’ve always wanted to work with Sunwoo and Anivision because like ourselves, they are looking to be on the front burner and be much more than a service company.”

Sunwoo’s Park adds. “The multi-media content and the way it’s used to teach preschoolers is what makes Wild Animal Baby stand apart,” he says. “When we started working on the show, we contacted S4 Studios because of our previous experience working with Larry at Nickelodeon, and we’ve always wanted to work together again. We also knew that S4 Studios had the experience and the range of talent we were looking for. They just know how to run shows.”

Additional credits for S4 Studios include Producer Geoffrey Kater and Production Coordinator John Evans. For National Wildlife Federation, Tony Summers was the Production Executive. For Sunwoo Entertainment, Jae Y. Moh was the Executive Producer and Moon Ju Kang was the CGI studio General Manager. Music and additional animation was by Peach Blossom Media, Singapore, Executive Producer, Lingun Sung. Writers were Adam and Seth Gross along with Bradley Zweig. David Baron of Lightpost in Los Angeles supervised post production.

About Sunwoo Entertainment
Sunwoo Entertainment started as a television commercial and animation production company. In years since, it has expanded to include planning, development, distribution, licensing, merchandising, feature films, performing arts, online content and games. It’s long-term goal is to create a theme park that will bring to life the company’s most exciting content.

About S4 Studios
S4 Studios is a multidisciplinary production company specializing in design, content development, 3D animation, 2D animation, visual effects and live action production for television, feature films, commercials and trailers and home video. Since its founding in 1999, the studio has built a client roster that includes Cartoon Network, Rhythm & Hues commercials, Flyer Entertainment, The Cimarron Group, Walt Disney Television Animation, Viacom, Warner Bros and Winner & Associates.

For more information visit www.s4studios.com.

Popularity: 3% [?]

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CBS Digital recently purchased Massive, embracing the artificial life-based software by Massive Software to speed turnaround of increasingly complex visual effects scenes on THE TWELFTH MAN (a pilot being produced for FOX Television), as well such projects as THE POPE and CAT7. Artists at the Los Angeles studio sought out the unique “autonomous agent” capabilities of Massive to efficiently fill large stadiums with realistic AI-enabled-characters for the basketball-themed show.

“Everyone wants full-on feature film-level effects for TV and with tools like Massive, you can now do huge-scale effects with a high degree of realism, a small team of artists and rapid turnaround,” said Craig Weiss, founder and director of VFX, CBS Digital. “Massive is a perfect piece of software for us.”

THE TWELFTH MAN follows the life of a basketball player as he bounces between pro teams. Instead of filling up seats by laboriously “stamping” shots of the group of actors filmed on set, CBS Digital was able to use Massive’s Ready-to-Run Stadium Agent to incorporate hundreds of individual digital characters that stand up, cheer and eat popcorn automatically in the scene.

“Massive characters act autonomously, with a ‘brain’ that allows them to react in ways that mirror real life,” said Diane Holland, ceo of Massive Software. “Using a Ready-to-Run Massive Agent like our Stadium Agent, a single animator can quite easily populate a scene with characters that respond realistically. As it did for feature films and TV commercials, Massive is ushering in the ability to develop and realize effects for primetime television programs and mini-series that were not possible before.”

Massive’s artificial intelligence-based animation system was initially developed to enable digital effects for the epic battle sequences on THE LORD OF THE RINGS movie trilogy. It has since been used on such blockbusters as KING KONG, which contained 600 Massive shots, and THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE.

In commercials, Massive has been helping producers and agencies scale up their creative concepts as well. Spots created using Massive include ads for Anheiser-Busch (Budweiser fans doing The Wave), Verizon (a vast human network outside the Verizon store), Heineken (paparazzi chasing Brad Pitt), United Way (Dr. Seuss being read to thousands of children), Corona (a multitude of mariachis storming the Great Wall) and Carlton Draught (a rowdy chorus staging the biggest ad they can).

Massive products include Massive Prime and Massive Jet. Massive Prime is the complete solution for interactively authoring, directing and rendering custom AI-enabled characters for animation and visual effects. Massive Jet features a streamlined, easy-to-use workflow to make AI-driven animation available to all animation and visual effects professionals. Massive agents speed up the workflow even further by allowing artists to choose from a variety of pre-built agents which are Ready-to-Run with AI-brains, skeletons, motion, geometry, cloth, textures, shaders and behavioral controls.

New Zealand-based Massive Software (www.massivesoftware.com) is the leading creator of artificial intelligence-based 3D animation systems. Massive was founded when Stephen Regelous programmed a unique piece of software for director Peter Jackson to make creation of complicated visual effects scenes involving hundreds of thousands of digital characters a practical reality. Massive garnered a Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2004.

Today, Massive Software develops a family of standalone, commercially available products, with customers including Weta Digital, The Mill, Animal Logic, Rhythm & Hues, Digital Domain, Method Studios and other leading digital production and effects studios.

Popularity: 3% [?]

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Look Effects was awarded the complete visual effects contract for Richard Kelly’s (DONNIE DARKO, DOMINO) upcoming feature SOUTHLAND TALES. The project is slated for release this fall and stars Sean William Scott, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Sarah Michelle Geller, among others.

SOUTHLAND TALES is one of only 19 films competing for the coveted Palm D’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Look Effects work on Southland Tales included high dynamic range (HDRI) matte paintings, a photorealistic digital extension of downtown Los Angeles and futuristic vehicles that were seamlessly integrated into present day L.A. Using the HDRI painted images LOOK was able to map the backgrounds within a 3D environment and create full 3D camera moves.

In completing their work on SOUTHLAND TALES, Look created a specific 3D department, acquiring a new mental ray render farm and increasing its rendering capacity by threefold. Additionally, Look built custom 3D workstation to handle specific scripting needs inside Maya and to handle the large data sets of the LIDAR scans of downtown L.A. also increased its 3D department by four fold and has installed Tefft Smith II as its CG supervisor.

“We are delighted to have been awarded the contract for SOUTHLAND TALES,” said Mark Driscoll, president and founder of Look Effects. “This job allowed us to expand upon our 3D expertise and capabilities. Working creatively with Richard Kelly was a real pleasure.”

“We are always looking to better serve our clients,” added Henrik Fett, vfx supervisor at Look Effects. “This expansion has enhanced our offerings to both feature and television clients. The innovative work we are currently doing on BONES and SOUTHLAND TALES is testament to how far our 3D division has come.”

Look Effects’ current visual effects clients include BONES (20th Century Fox Television), MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE (Regency Television) and CRIMINAL MINDS (CBS), as well as upcoming movies THE FOUNTAIN (Warner Brothers) and STICK IT! (Touchstone).

Hollywood-based Look Effects (www.lookfx.com) is a leading provider of digital effects solutions for feature film, entertainment television and commercial projects with its services including digital effects design, supervision and production, 3D animation, including full 3D character animation and compositing services.

Popularity: 3% [?]

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Repeat business is one of the best indicators that you’re on the right track, so when Framestore Design received an order for a second complete year’s worth of programming idents from Wowow, Japan’s largest satellite TV channel, they were suitably chuffed. “It’s very gratifying,” says Producer Simon Whalley, “They decided that they had confidence enough in our work to come back for a second year.”

It took designer Adam Parry around 8 weeks to create 64 individual idents – a whole year’s worth of material. They have just started running, and will be seen through to April 2007.

The idents are each five seconds long, and cover 8 televisual genres. Each genre, in turn, is represented through 8 ’seasons’. The animations have a strongly organic theme, with further visual unity provided by the colour-theming, which has been created in accordance with Japanese tradition – pink for Spring, white/gold for New Year, for example. With the basic animations remaining constant, variation is created through the use of titling and embedded icons representing each genre. Each ident is further complemented by delicately varied music, specially commissioned by the Framestore Design team from composer Sam Hooper.

Of his approach to the brief, Adam Parry says, “Because they’re little ‘countdowns’ that go before programmes, I thought that a clock would be good device.” Working in Photoshop, Parry produced a set of sketches and mood boards that gave the client a good idea of where he was going. He takes up the story, “The idea of a clock bursting into life engendered –naturally enough – the cuckoo clock as the basis for the design. Again, not a conventional cuckoo clock, but a highly stylised, almost abstract version.”

It’s hard to convey in words the subtlety and wit that Parry has brought to this task – we suggest you take a look at the Quicktime and stills at this point…

With the client in Japan, good communication and feedback were essential. The work was delivered for approval via front, Framestore CFC’s proprietary online suite of production tools. This allowed the Design team to create and upload full-res NTSC Quicktimes of drafts and finished work onto front at the end of the UK working day. The time difference in Tokyo made it possible for the Wowow clients to view the work-in-progress and comment on it, using front’s ‘Comment’ area, in time for the start of the next working day. This made for an exceptionally smooth and efficient work-flow. “Rika Otake, the Producer for Wowow, completely embraced the front technology,” comments Whalley, “She was delighted to use it to optimise the workflow.”

The music was created by freelance musician Sam Hooper. “I was familiar with his music from elsewhere,” says Parry, “Including gigs of his I’d seen. I was very pleased (as were the clients) with the almost ‘folky’ approach he brought to the work – using live instruments, for example, and with his responsiveness to the visual material.”

The ‘Spring’ selection were the first set of idents to be delivered, to be in good time for their launch in April, with the other sets soon following. Parry feels that he has even improved on last year’s work, and the delighted client feedback would seem to bear this out.

Note:
The genres represented are: Animation, Drama, Movie, Music, Soccer, Sports, Stage, Extra. The seasons and their colours are: Spring, Summer 1, Summer 2, Autumn, Winter, Christmas, New Year, Valentines.

Credits
WOWOW idents – 2006/07
Client Producer Rika Otake

Framestore CFC
Designer Adam Parry
Design Producer Simon Whalley
Music Sam Hooper

Popularity: 3% [?]

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The crust of the earth ruptures and a pair of 500 foot tall, stiletto wearing “demonettes,” all spikes, studs and leather, emerge from Hell intent on the destruction of Gotham. In an instant, the city is engulfed in dense clouds of billowing black smoke, molten lava, flames and shock waves that destroy everything in their path. The vixens tower over the Manhattan skyline and, with their demonic guitar riffs, set about the total decimation of the city as terrified New Yorkers attempt, in vain, to flee this unimaginably powerful and relentless dystopia of heavy metal! For VH1’s Metal Month of May UVPHACTORY (www.uvph.com) has truly unleashed the Apocalypse.

Produced and directed by UVPH, the live-action, effects heavy :30 teaser exploded onto the airwaves April 14. “This very sexy and menacing live-action piece is extremely effects heavy. In fact, this just might be the most mind-blowing piece we have created to date. The teaser is all about Hell breaking loose so we poured over heavy metal films, comics, magazines and listened to Slayer, Iron Maiden, Pantera, AC/DC, Motorhead, KISS, Megadeath and Lamb of God (which was used in the spot) for a week which helped get everyone’s creative juices flowing. In the end, this spot has the feel of a cinematic trailer for the likes of V for Vendetta, The Day After Tomorrow or War of the Worlds,” stated Brian Welsh, UVPHACTORY Executive Producer.

“VH1 wanted the teaser to look like a big budget Sci-Fi Hollywood blockbuster but did not have the millions of dollars needed to create and shoot the destruction of New York City, cars exploding in flames, New Yorkers running from the havoc wrought by the heavy metal ‘devilettes’, or for cameras shooting as they fly over the Empire State Building. We needed to find a cost effective way to execute the client’s boards and Bashir Hamid, our 3D Animator/Compositor, suggested a trick-of-the-trade, photogammetry, which allowed us to turn still images into 3D environments,“ explained Alexandre Moors, UVPH Creative Director. “I walked through New York shooting hi-res photos and this innovative process allowed us to transform the stills into 3D scenes in which you have camera movements. By assigning geometry to each building, the software was able to create the parts of the pictures that were missing as we moved around a structure. So all the city images are 3D and the skies are completely fabricated as well. “

Dicken Schrader, VH1 Senior Producer/Writer and Director of the live-action spoofs, said of his experience working with the UVPH team, ”When what you have on tape is better than your original concept I’d have to say it was a truly great experience. It still astonishes me that UVPHACTORY was able to find a way around the obvious execution, come up with an alternative that was within our resources, and create something of this caliber. The results were better than anything I had initially envisioned. It was a great learning experience for all of us, and the results are just incredible. The teaser was not just approved, it was applauded!”

“UVPHACTORY is able to handle all aspects of design and production really well – they produced the live-action shoot for the image spots, and designed the layout, directed the green screen and executed all of the 3D and visual effects for the tease beautifully! In addition to all of that, they also created a complete graphic promo toolkit package that was used to donut a gazillion other promos for the month – all of which turned out really well. I have worked with UVPH on a few projects now and they have always knocked it out of the park, which is why I keep going back to them. They make us all look great, every time.”

UVPHACTORY also produced, cast, designed the heavy metal concert set, complete with rock ‘n roll lighting and pyrotechnics, and the prosthetics used in the two live-action spoofs, a :30 and a :60, of the heavy metal scene created to promote VH1’s month of metal madness. The first will begin airing on April 23, the second on April 28, and both will continue through May.

Bad as he may be in his music videos, the public and private personae of “The Prince of Darkness” are quite different. In front of the cameras, the past-his- prime Lucifer, surrounded by four gyrating and scantily clad “devilettes,” is all macho struts, distorted guitar riffs and earsplitting rhythms. However, his human side lies just below the surface. In spoof #1, the old softie seems to be having an allergic reaction to the peanuts in his snack cookies. In spoof #2, the shock rocker storms off the set infuriated when the director repeatedly calls him “Luci,” not demonstrating the respect this aging family man craves.

In addition to the teaser and two image spots, UVPH designed and executed a full graphics package for the Metal Month of May toolkit including logo design and animation, six promo opens, six promo closes, lower thirds, backgrounds, transitions and single and double mortises.

The UVPH creative team included Principal/Co-Founder Scott Sindorf; Principal/Co-Founder Damijan Saccio; Creative Director Alexander Moors; Executive Producer Brian Welsh; Designers John Stanch and Colin Hess; Lead 3D Animator/Compositor Bashir Hamid; Compositor/Rotoscope Eunha Sophie Lee; Compositors John Stanch, Shuyi Wu, Sean Donnelly and Robert Domani Henry; 3D Animator/Tracking Sean Eno; Editor Robert Lopuski; Directors Alexandre Moors (teaser) and VH1’s Dicken Schrader (live-action spots); Director of Photography (live-action) Brian O’Carroll; Assistant Director/Line Producer Jonathan Lia; 2nd Assistant Director Justin Pandolfino; Production Manager Melissa Sarno; Gaffer E.I. (Ted) Reid; Art Department Betil Dagladen; and Wardrobe Katy Robbins.

UVPHACTORY utilized Softimage|XSI 5.0, Next Limit’s RealFlow 3.0 fluid simulator, Boujou 3.0, Apple Final Cut Pro 5.0, Adobe After Effects 7.0, Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Adobe Illustrator CS2 in the completion of this project.

Representing VH1 were Senior Producer/Writer Dicken Schrader, Producer VH1 Creative Shannon Horan, Senior Vice President VH1 Creative and Consumer Marketing Nigel Cox-Hagen, Executive Producer Wendell Wooten, Vice President VH1 Off-Air Nancy Mazzei, Vice President Creative Tony Maxwell, and Director On-Air Promotions Adam Wilson.

About UVPHACTORY
UVPH is a New York-based design and production company offering a complete range of creative services including conceptualization, live-action direction and production, editorial, 2D/3D animation, sound composition/design and final compositing for broadcast, commercial, film, music video and web clients. Additionally, UVPH has leapt full force into the longer format arena, directing and producing music videos. Since the company’s formation in 2000, UVPH has attracted a diverse client base including AT&T, BET, Bravo, Cartoon Network, CBS, Cinemax, Cingular, Coca-Cola, Comedy Central, ESPN, FOX Sports, General Electric, HBO, IBM, IFC, Miramax, MTV, NBC, Scripps Networks, SCI FI Network, Showtime, USA, US Cellular, VH1, and VOOM HD Network, among many others.
www.uvph.com

Credits:
Design and Production Company: UVPHACTORY
City/State: New York, NY
Directors: Alexandre Moors (teaser), and VH1’s Dicken Scharader (live-action)
Principle, Co-Founder: Scott Sindorf
Principle, Co-Founder: Damijan Saccio
Creative Director: Alex Moors
Designer: John Stanch
Designer: Colin Hess
Executive Producer: Brian Welsh
Director of Photography (live-action): Brian O’Carroll
Assistant Director/Line Producer: Jonathan Lia
Production Manager: Melissa Sarno
2nd Assistant Director: Justin Pandolfino
Editor: Robert Lopuski
Lead 3D Animator/Compositor: Bashir Hamid
3D Animator/Tracking: Sean Eno
Compositor: John Stanch
Compositor: Shuyi Wu
Compositor/Rotoscope: Eunha Sophie Lee
Compositer: Sean Donnelly
Compositor: Robert Domani Henry
Gaffer: E.I. (Ted) Reid
Art Department: Betil Dagladen
Wardrobe: Katy Robbins
Client: VH1
City/State: New York, NY
Senior Producer/Writer/Director: Dicken Schrader
Producer VH1 Creative: Shannon Horan
Senior Vice President VH1 Creative and Consumer Marketing: Nigel Cox-Hagen Executive Producer: Wendell Wooten
Vice President VH1 Off-Air: Nancy Mazzei
Vice President Creative: Tony Maxwell
Director On-Air Promotions: Adam Wilson

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Encore Hollywood provided Digital Intermediate services for DAY WATCH (Dnevnoy Dozor), a Russian film from Director Timur Bekmambetov that scored the biggest opening week box office in that country’s history when it premiered there. The project was the first to pass through Encore’s new DI pipeline and was by all measures colossal in scale. The 142-minute film involved more than 7 terabytes of 2K data and some 500 visual effects shots supplied by VFX vendors located across Europe.

DAY WATCH is the second film in a fantasy-action trilogy about forces of light and dark that battle in medieval and contemporary Russia. The first film in the series, NIGHT WATCH, also directed by Bekmambetov, set all-time box office records for a Russian film—records that are now being broken by the sequel. Fox Searchlight Pictures bought international distribution rights to the trilogy and released NIGHT WATCH in the U.S. in February with DAY WATCH to follow in 2007.

Encore Hollywood handled color grading and final compositing for DAY WATCH, and provided similar services for NIGHT WATCH. However while post work for the earlier film was performed with HD media, the work for DAY WATCH was conducted in high resolution data with color grading completed in the studio’s new DI Theater.

It was a heady undertaking, according to Encore Hollywood Managing Director Barbara Marshall, as constuction of the theater was completed just two weeks before work on DAY WATCH began.“Given the size and scope of the project, and the fact that our client was overseas, it was a challenge as our first venture into DI,” said Marshall. “But we were very pleased by how well our team and our room performed.”

The workflow for DAY WATCH was unusual and placed intense demands on Encore’s DI staff. The majority of the film was shot on 35mm film and those elements were scanned to 2K data in Russia and shipped to Encore on hard drives. Additional elements were recorded on HDCAM and 16mm film. The 16mm elements were shipped directly to the U.S. and scanned by Encore.

In order to make the delivery date for the film’s premiere in Russia, color grading had to begin before the film was fully edited. Encore’s Dan Aguilar, who conformed the film in the studio’s Discreet Fire bay, regularly received updated cuts from the film’s Russian editor, Dmitri Kiselyov, which he had to incorporate into the film’s master and then pass on to the DI Theater. Color grading spanned two shifts with Colorist Arnold Ramm working days, followed by Laura Jans at night.

“While I was assembling reel two with the assistant editor, Arnold was next door grading reel one,” recalled Aguilar. “As soon as Arnold was done, he’d render out the finished color and I’d send him the next reel.”

To make data management easier, all of the 2K data for the film was stored on a central server directly accessible to both the Fire and the DI Theater. The studio’s infrastructure was designed to handle high-speed data flows seamlessly. As a result, editorial changes made by Aguilar were available to Ramm or Jans in the DI Theater in the time it took to walk between rooms.

Still with clients located half a world away and intricate effects elements arriving from multiple foreign suppliers, the logistics of managing the project were intimidating. “Coordinating this whole exercise was a huge undertaking,” noted Encore DI Producer Clif Gordon. “We had to make sure that things hit at the right time, that the proper elements were delivered for film recording, and that our artists made it to screenings of the film. It was a team effort.”

Ramm, who took the lead in color grading, said it required trial and error to arrive at the right look for DAY WATCH. “We went through four distinct iterations,” he said. “I initially set a look with the DP, but the director wanted a different approach and the Russian executive producers had yet another idea in mind. The producers ultimately connected me with a veteran film timer, Matvey Schatz—a Russian émigré—and together we came up with a look that satisfied everyone. We called it our ‘Russian’ look.”

That look, said Ramm, differs from the cool, blue look typical of many contemporary American action films. “It’s a little more crisp and slightly on the warm side of neutral,” he said. “It has the quality of parchment.”

Jans noted that the look conforms to the expectations of Russian moviegoers and to the technology of Russian movie houses. “Russian projectors generally have weaker lights than we do here,” she said. “Too much contrast can be a problem.”

In addition to setting the color, Ramm had to reframe the film. The film was shot with the intention of displaying it in a 1:8:5 aspect ratio, but the producers later decided to go with anamorphic framing at a ratio of 2:3:5. “We had to reframe every shot,” Ramm said. “We looked at it through a matte and did a lot of vertical panning.”

Ramm said that Encore’s DI Theater offers the best coloring environment of any facility he has seen. He added that his Russian clients were thrilled with the ability to correct color in real time and to use video-style tools to make subtle adjustments.

“Our Da Vinci 2K color corrector has six windows and two defocus boards and that allows us to do just about anything,” observed Ramm. “We could defocus highlights and see the results immediately on the projection screen. We could decide if we liked it on the spot and move along.”

Jans was equally enthusiastic about working in the DI Theater. “It was awesome, amazing,” she said. “It’s a non-linear process, so I can call up any scene I want in a second. It’s such a smooth process.”

Encore Hollywood’s DI pipeline, along with other DI facilities in the Ascent Media Feature Services Group which also includes Company 3, differs from those at other facilities in that it encompasses the entire post production process. Along with the DI Theater and the Fire suite, the studio employs MTI’s Control Dailies product to prepare digital dailies and also has an award-winning department for visual effects work.

Having mounted a virtual round-the-clock effort to deliver DAY WATCH on time, Marshall feels that Encore’s DI team is now battle tested. “Moving into the next project, we know we have a strong staff with a lot of experience in managing large scale projects,” she said.

Encore Hollywood is located at 6344 Fountain Avenue, Hollywood, California 90028. For more information, call (323) 466-7663 or visit www.encorehollywood.com.

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Side Effects Software applauds C.O.R.E. Feature Animation on their ground-breaking work on Disney’s The Wild. This CG animated film is the culmination of over three years of creativity and hard work by the production team at C.O.R.E. As partners in production, Side Effects Software had the privilege of working with C.O.R.E. throughout this project, seeing first-hand the high quality of animation as it was being delivered.

“It’s wonderful to see The Wild on the big screen.” says Kim Davidson, President and CEO, Side Effects Software. “Working with C.O.R.E. has always been a great experience for us but watching them use Houdini for an all-CG animated film has been especially rewarding.”

For over a decade, C.O.R.E. has been successful working on numerous films and television shows, but The Wild is the studio’s first animated feature film. In only a few weeks, they had to create a feature film pipeline from the ground up and begin producing shots. As technology partners, Side Effects Software played a key role in the development of this Houdini-based pipeline. From character rigging and animation to lighting, virtually every frame has been touched by Houdini.

Side Effects Software also wants to congratulate its dedicated team of on-site programmers and support staff for providing C.O.R.E. with technical support, custom tools and training solutions when it was needed most. Their dedication helped C.O.R.E. create a pipeline that was the ideal mix of custom tools and off-the-shelf software.

“We worked together to develop processes that made the pipeline more efficient,” says Edward Lam, Senior Software Developer, Side Effects Software. “We took a proactive approach and solved production challenges before they were encountered.”

As a result of having programmers on-site, Side Effects Software was able to add exciting, new, production-proven features to Houdini such as Digital Assets, Flipbook blocking, Attribute Transfer, UV Pelting, and more.

“The Houdini community is going to be really excited to see how Houdini is used in this movie,” says Davidson. “Now everyone will get to see how deep Houdini really can go.”

About Houdini
The Houdini family of animation software offers digital artists an unprecedented level of power, flexibility and control based on award-winning technology. The comprehensive feature set includes modeling, animation, character tools, particle and channel operations, compositing, integrated rendering with Houdini Mantra, and much more. All Houdini applications work together seamlessly and are available for the Windows, Linux, IRIX and Solaris operating systems. Houdini has been used to create stunning digital animation in blockbuster films, including “X 2: X-Men United,” “Daredevil,” “Spider-Man,” “XXX,” “The Sum of All Fears,” “Black Hawk Down,” “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” “X-Men” and “The Matrix,” among many others. www.sidefx.com

About Side Effects Software
Established in 1987, Side Effects Software is a world leader in the development of advanced 3D and 2D graphics and special effects software for use in film, broadcast and game development. Today, Side Effects Software leads the field of non-linear animation with its unique, award-winning Houdini technology. Houdini is used by numerous digital content creation leaders including Digital Domain, DreamWorks SKG, Electronic Arts, Namco, Nickelodeon, Rhythm & Hues, Sega, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Walt Disney Feature Animation and Weta Digital Ltd.

For more information visit www.sidefx.com

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