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Census by Shilo |
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Best Tutorials - 2009 Selection |
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When We Left Earth winners Announced |
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The Making of Cable |
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Toy Story Concept Art |
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Alice In Wonderland Exclusive HD Pictures |
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The Making Of Dominoes |
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CG Gallery Awards - January 2010 |
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Vanquish CG Trailer |
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Unknown Place Challenge |
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Spot Focus : Dominoes |
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Top Indepenant short movie 2009 |
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Hess : Mountain Race |
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Flashforward VFX |
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Interview with Neil Blevins |
The principals behind Los Angeles-based editorial company Rock Paper Scissors (RPS) and visual effects company a52 today announced the launch of a new, full-service, design-driven company named Elastic.
ITo support their new venture, RPS and a52 co-founders Angus Wall and Linda Carlson have hired Alex Gorodetzki as Elastic's executive producer and Trevor Shepard as its creative director of design.
"Elastic has grown out of the needs of our clients and the desires of our artists to make pictures and tell stories," said Wall, who together with Carlson launched RPS in 1992 and a52 in 1995. "It's great to operate as a little studio and produce projects from beginning to end. RPS, a52 and Elastic will be working as autonomous companies and a complete digital production studio." Elastic will represent all in-house editors and VFX artists from RPS and a52 for projects ranging from title to type design.
"Both Trevor and Alex have created a lot of high-profile projects requiring hybrid production approaches," Wall added. "Alex has facilitated projects ranging from broadcast network launches to Super Bowl spots. The plan is for Alex to work closely with a52 EP Ron Cosentino and RPS EP CL Weaver to present a unified force in offering our clients creative solutions."
Elastic already has assignments underway for Nike and many other prominent international brands. The first Elastic spot is Andrew Hall's Nike "Spider," produced through Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo and their clients at Nikelab and offering a perfect example of visual content requiring the type of hybrid production approach Elastic was created to address.
Questions and answers with Andrew Hall
Can you give me a quick play-by-play on what you and your team did on this spot?
Andrew Hall : on this spot, I directed the spot........I shot the plates myself and worked with my team to create the spider and its interaction with this environment, creating the fabric of the story which is its toll to create the web whichs the inspiration for the shoe. I wanted to give the spot a documentary feel, that we were witnessing a creation over a period of a day, starting from first light to dusk. Seeing this creature toil away at its creation and this being the influence on the creation of the shoe.
Can you give me the gist of the agency's creative brief for the spot?
AH : For Nike spider, the agency contacted us about creating a spot for the new Nike flywire technology, and having connections and influences to the real world. In this particular case a spider creating a web that was made up of this approach to creating a shoe, with the fly wires.
What was the biggest challenge(s) you faced on this project, and how werethey addressed?
AH : Well because of the nature of time frame and cost constraints, it lead to being both very lean and productive. I decided to shoot the plates myself, using a canon 1d camera. I shoot all the plates at 12 frames per second for the realtime shots and a series of time-lapse shots over a number of days both used in the spot and for reference. I had an idea of the type of shots. I wanted but also left it little to chance and just found stuff that I thought could be effective backdrops for the action. I wanted to give the piece a documentary feel, more like studies than orchestrated shots. So the shots organically drove the pace of the spot. We then set about creating the spider and the webs it laid down to form the shoe, taking a influence from the shoe design, Max Ulichney created the look of the spider to be an extension of the shoe. i think the most challenging aspect was creating time-lapse shots that needed to live with the live-action and also creating the believability to the performance and storytelling.
