For many years, folklore tales from Ireland, Scotland and
England have included stories of mythical giants roaming the land.
With a penchant for terrorizing townspeople and their children they
were feared and vilified at the outset. However, upon delving
deeper into the stories one usually finds that the giants were
simply large humans with a soft heart and the ending of the tale
portrayed the giants as becoming friends and protectors. What do
tales of mysterious giants roaming the green hillsides of England
and Scotland have to do with live action, computer graphics and our
television industry? For that answer all one has to do is tune in
to one of the most popular shows appearing on the Discovery Channel
on Monday nights. American Choppers has exploded onto the
airways with humor, technical creativity and downright family fun.
Featuring the outstanding work and abilities of a father, two sons
and an assortment of wonderful design technicians, this weekly show
which features the construction of one of a kind motorcycles is a
treat for even those who dont don their leathers and hit the back
roads on their bikes. The Teutuls, Senior, Junior and Mikey
intersperse humor, family squabbles and fun in between some really
awesome design and construction work on a now large number of
unique and beautiful motorcycles. Their creations are one of a kind
and have taken the Chopper enthusiasts to new heights of dreams.
Teutul Sr. Goes Native
What could be more fun and entertaining than watching the Teutuls
hard at work in their Orange County, New York shop working on yet
another awesome bike? It has to be following the Tuetles as they
wing across the Atlantic to England and Europe where they attend a
bike rally, visit Omaha Beach, don kilts and partake of High Tea.
This improbable journey called for a unique and outstanding
promotional spot. One that would depict the flavor and the
adventures that were in store for this family in the British Isles.
The artists commissioned to do the promotional material brought
great experience and credits to the project. Heading the team were
Adam Bluming as director and Zack Nederlander as visual effects
supervisor. Also onboard contributing to the animation and
compositing work were John Robson and Cory Shaw with Melanie
Franciosi handling the color keying in the composite phase. Adam
Bluming is well known in the graphic design and live action
industry for his work. Beginning his graphic design work in high
school creating album covers, Adams talents led him deeper into
the creative world where he attended the Rhode Island School of
Design and the day after graduation began his work with R/GA LA.
R/GA later became Imaginary Forces where Adam worked for 8 years
and became a Creative Director heading many projects including
creating live action teasers for the movie Men in Black II
and commercials for Nintendo, Nissan and Coors Light. Adam formed
his firm, Convert, one year ago with Executive Producer Mick
Ebeling and signed on as one of the Directors on the Ebeling
Groups roster.
Mikey revisits Scotland
Zack Nederlander began his career studying computer engineering but
quickly found his love of graphic design pushing him in another
direction. Zack attended the Savannah College of Art & Design where
he immersed himself in the computer art field. Upon graduation,
Zack moved to Los Angeles where he worked on various commercials
and picked up experience in visual effects, animation and
compositing along the way. Zack delved deeply into visual effects
and worked as lead compositor for a firm that executed seventy
shots for the Miramax film, The Aviator. He is also working
on a series of mixed reality combining visual effects with live
action animation in commercials and music videos. Adam and Zack had
worked together on previous projects due to the fact that Adam had
found himself drawn toward visual effects in his live action work.
Working with Zack on a spot for BBC America, Adam became more
excited about visual effects. In the meantime Convert had done the
rebrand for BBC America which involved a large live action campaign
including visual effects. Convert has also finished some pieces for
AMC as well as co-directing the music video for GO on
Commons latest album.
Paul Jr. in CINEMA 4D
Convert prepared to fly to New York for the filming and contacted
long time friend and co-worker Zack Nederlander to be the effects
supervisor for this project with Adam.. Adam and Zack brainstormed
on just how they felt the project should be put together and the
tack that they wanted to take. Adam felt that it would be fun and
entertaining if the project called for the Tuetles to interact with
famous European landmarks, as if they were giants modifying them
with their own unique touch. Adam explained, I felt like we could
have one of them attaching a sidecar to a double decker bus and if
hes a giant, he could squat next to it. Also, what about having
one of them pulling the guts out of Big Ben and the face of Big Ben
could become a working tachometer.
Mikey hard at work on the bus
The timetable left little room for retakes. With a two week
deadline to finish the entire green screen, tracking and composite
shots, they flew to New York and set to work creating a promo that
will leave you laughing as well as inspired by the innovative
artwork and live action combinations that are included. Zack
related, We opted for one of the highest quality HD cams that
records nearly uncompressed HD over a high-bandwidth, dual-link
HD-SDI tether to HDCAM-SR format. Even though we were going to
standard definition in the end we needed a lot of information to
get really nice tracks because we didn't have time to do motion
control. It was quick and there were a lot of shots. "Each one of
those shots had to have a rich environment created for it. From
that we decided immediately to keep everything high def throughout
the pipeline. We used programs like Boujou Bullet and SynthEyes
which were 3d tracking programs to extract our 3d camera
information. In fact, the list of programs used on this project
was varied and exciting. For modeling and animation - CINEMA 4D
R9.5, for compositing - Adobe After Effects 6.5, for image editing
- Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Apple Final Cut Pro 5 and for 3D tracking
- 2D3 Boujou Bullet v2.1 and Andersson Technologies SynthEyes. Zack
explained the planning, We didnt have time to build the models so
we purchased them. We got them in every 3D format that you can
imagine and in CINEMA 4D we were able to assimilate all of these
different formats as well as the tracking data that we got from
Boujou Bullet and SynthEyes and work directly on importing our
extremely high resolution/high def footage and combine these worlds
entirely in CINEMA 4D. We found ourselves using all of the features
in this new version of Cinema which was really interesting. "Some
of those features were really new, so MAXON helped us out a ton. I
called them basically every other day. And then wed render out our
stuff using After Effects which most people dont realize is a
really high end compositing tool and works terrifically with CINEMA
4D because CINEMA 4D can export an After Effects file. The team
then had a way of working that allowed each program to seamlessly
interface with the next in the pipeline. When revisions were called
for they found that they were able to turn around and revisit any
step in the process easily in CINEMA 4D. Each of the four artists
working on the project could open each others files and pick up
where the other artist had left off. This allowed for a very high
quality and production value. Adam brought a fresh perspective to
the piece with his desire to stylize the film directly from the
beginning rather than setting up the color and stylizing during the
final process. Adam related, You know ... the whole soul of the
spot is to make these guys look like kids in a candy store. Or just
like a big playground where they concoct things in their
imagination.
Junior sizes up L'Arc de Triomph
Adam felt with that in his mind, it would be unique instead of
trying to make things look real, to go the other way and create a
feeling of fantasy. He wanted to create the landmarks to look like
giant toy cardboard props. This idea led to an atmosphere that
allowed for leeway in creation and imagination. Where other artists
might massage and finesse the look and feel of a work to make it
seem as real as possible, instead they were working toward making
everything look real in the sense that the Teutuls were truly
there, but with a fun measure of make believe thrown in. For
example, the spot where Mikey looks like hes next to a real double
decker bus that is made of cardboard depicts the idea well. A very
unique and wonderful presentation began to emerge, a true marriage
of fantasy and real life that leaves the viewers smiling and
wanting more. It follows all of the rules of good film such as
focal length, lighting, depth of field, yet incorporates whimsy and
an almost magical feel as Senior, Junior and Mikey are shown in
various situations in their new British playground. As you might
expect, the filming was not without its humorous anecdotes. Adam
relates while chuckling, When the Teutuls first came on set, their
giant trucks arrived, huge 18 wheelers, really just to carry them
They walk in and the AD pulled Senior over and with a kind of
stuttering voice said... Senior, this is Adam Bluming, hes the
director, and he puts this giant hand out which completely
sandwiched mine even with one hand and with a very loud gruff voice
he said ADAM, I said yes and his face was all red and he said
OKAY ... LETS JUST GET THIS DONE! And I immediately felt like I
was on the show with just three hours to create some bizarre
looking bike ... it didnt scare me but it did make me feel like,
wow, Im on this mission, this spot has to be done and it has to be
done on time, he was cracking the whip and I have to get a lot done
in a time that isnt really do-able, and we did it you know. And it
was really funny how in some strange way I felt like I was on
American Choppers, but only in their commercial department."
Senior Teutul, A big Man in England
Another incident that fit Seniors personality so well came much
later after the filming. Adam laughs as he remembers, A funny
story which actually just happened yesterday, was Mick, our
Executive Producer, just so happened to be flying out of LAX
yesterday and bumped into Junior, Senior, and Mikey at LAX, and I
came up to them and said, Hey guys, did you see our spot? Did you
like it? The only response was ... Senior, through his glasses
with a grin, saying, Yep. And it just felt so funny because it
was kind of the affirmation and pat on the back like the end of
their show. Never too emotional, its never too complimentary, its
Yep. Sort of like, 'you did a good job and I approve so on to the
next.' If you have watched the show and have seen Senior relating
to his sons and co-workers you know that this large gruff man with
a heart of gold and few words is the same off as on camera and on
the job. CINEMA 4D R9.5 plays an all important role in Converts
overall design work. It is their main 3D program and has become not
just something that the firm uses occasionally, its basically
become such a standard that they do most of their work in CINEMA 4D
R9.5 now. Adam and Zack look forward to working on many more
projects together. I think that you will find the promo original
with loads of fun and a special look at three guys who find that
things are quite different on the other side of The Pond. Have
fun watching the promo here. You can also find out more about
Convert and their work at The Ebeling Group. Lets hope that these two
gentlemen team up again and again to provide us with more of their
outstanding visual work.
Story by Kathie Berry Websites: http://www.berry-designs.com http://www.planit3d.com Email: kathie@berry-designs.com
January 2, 2006 |
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