The traditional commercials production model is heavily under pressure, and rapidly changing drastically, in particular for VFX. Feature film and commercials workflows are converging, but at the same time there is a also an increased diversification to cross-media platforms. It is not only a multitude of different outputs that are in demand, the need for streamlined and effective methodologies and boosted efficiency also makes it necessary to adopt and incorporate new technology and processes into the production workflow, all the way from pre to post.
This presentation focuses on how the use of AR, VR and LED techniques streamlined production and boosted visual appeal on recent commercials work at Framestore Los Angeles.
Keypoints
LIDAR and photogrammetry as location acquisition and production tools
- Virtual tech scouts using VR and 360 video
Small footprint “guerilla” Virtual Production helpers: Framestore’s AR tablet visualizer & virtual camera capture workflow
LED workflows for in-camera effects, and the prep for it, which turns the traditional linear production model upside down: Challenges and chances.
Efficient metadata collection during the shoot, and using it during post: GPS & time code data for HDR collection, smart lenses and camera info.
Speaker Profile
Michael Ralla is a VFX Supervisor for Framestore in Los Angeles. Over the span of his 15-year career, he has worked on more than 50 feature films, including some of the most successful and Oscar-winning blockbusters of all times. An engineering graduate of the renowned Audiovisual Media Program in Stuttgart/Germany, his career has seen him traverse the globe, gaining invaluable experience from studios including Animal Logic in Sydney, MPC in Vancouver, Digital Domain in Los Angeles and Industrial Light & Magic in San Francisco - learning from the best in the industry.
At Framestore, Michael has supervised the VFX on major advertising and film projects, including BMW’s 360° campaign ‘Eyes On Gigi’, a sequence on Disney's "Christopher Robin", the 2019 Super Bowl “Wizard” commercial for the highly anticipated Toyota Supra, as well as Apple’s renowned HomePod short film “Welcome Home”, for which he won a D&AD Yellow Pencil, a Silver Clio Award, and a VES Award for Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal Commercial. He is a regular creative collaborator of award-winning director Marc Forster, and has directly worked with top directors like Spike Jonze, as well as some of the most popular up-and-coming filmmakers, such as Oscar Hudson. Michael lives with his wife and their son in Los Angeles, California and spends every minute outside of work with surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding, photography and playing drums and bass guitar.