Frankie .0 Helps Ingenuity Engine Create Virgin Holidays TVC

Hollywood-based production studio Ingenuity Engine recently relied on Cospectives video review tool, Frankie, to help finish a three-part television commercial campaign for Virgin Holidays. Frankie allowed the team at Ingenuity Engine to review and discuss work-in-progress with the director, producers and the ad agency, even though they were in four separate locations. Synchronized, interactive video review enabled an efficient creative decision-making process.

Hired by M&C Saatchi in London to work with noted director Joseph Kahn, Ingenuity Engine was tasked with creating a series of three ads for Virgin Holidays. The campaign is aimed at British couples and families and features the humorous tagline Unleash your Mojo. One spot follows a very ordinary couple who land in Florida and are magically transformed into just the sort of adventurous, fun-loving people they werent being at home. The couple is shown on a romantic cruise ship and at a swanky resort. Another spot shows a family of four, "the Harlows, looking drab in muted colors and searching for a parking spot. Again, the moment they arrive in Florida, the palette shifts to bright colors, the music picks up and the "Harlow Globetrotters are suddenly all smiles.

"Theyre fun commercials to watch, said David Lebensfeld, VFX supervisor and creative director at Ingenuity Engine (IE). "As you might imagine, our creative team had a great time making them happen."

It was director Kahn who suggested that the agency hire IE for on-set creative and postproduction work. Ingenuity Engine had worked with Kahn many times before, on videos for Britney Spears and Lady Gaga as well as TVCs for Old Navy, Jell-O, Fox Sports and many others.

"We have a long history of working with Joseph, said Lebensfeld, who travelled from the IE office in Hollywood to South Africa for the one-week shoot. "Theres an unspoken trust and knowledge about what we collectively want to accomplish on set. What we bring to the table is good execution."

On Set in South Africa

Lebensfeld worked closely with Kahn in preproduction meetings and on set in South Africa before heading to London to shoot FX plates and start editorial.

"My job was to help Joseph create the commercial he wanted to, Lebensfeld said. Case in point: a challenging and innovative transition from the couple luxuriating in a hot tub to a new scene where the husband is swinging a sword and turning a tuna into sushi. "I know what Joseph wants the shots to look like. Understanding his ideas allowed us to find a way to execute that transition that we knew would work for him."

In another sequence, the storyboard for the Unleash your Mojo spot shows a mans face morphing into a lions face as seen through a glass of wine. "We could tell it wouldnt work as drawn, explained Lebensfeld. "Our conversation instantly became an idea session back and forth. We figured out together how to make it work, and had fun doing it."

For the family spot, as the mother steps out of her car and her dingy London black-and-white life, her heavy clothes become a brilliant white one-piece swimsuit as she strides confidently into bright sunshine. Initially, there was a problem with the way her clothes fell away. This was solved by reimagining the transition, a quick solution that ended up being more elegant than originally planned. In short: carefully tweaking the ideas on the storyboard led to a strong and artistically compelling execution on the screen.

Post in LA - Frankie reviews every day

Ingenuity Engine completed all of the postproduction work at its studio in Hollywood. The commercials required complicated transitions between shots with overlapping VFX, clean up and set extensions. It was there, also, that the team began the video editing process, first using cineSync - Cospectives review tool for feature film work - then switching to Frankie. IE completed the spots in less than six weeks and throughout that period held regular review sessions with their internal creative team, the director up the street in Los Angeles and the M&C Saatchi producers in London.

"We used Frankie each morning for our interactive reviews of the previous days work, said Oliver Taylor, VFX producer at Ingenuity Engine. "By using the synced review option in Frankie while we talked to our client on the phone we were able to get much more out of those conversations. Using a tool like Frankie is the only way we can do this."

Every morning Taylor would upload the current video for review, send a link to the director, who was in L.A., the producer in London and the M&C Saatchi producers, also in London, and begin the review. That means that six people, in four places were reviewing the same footage simultaneously. As they watched the footage, frame by frame, any one of them could hit play, pause, make notes or even sketch their ideas right onto the video - all in sync with everyone in the review.

"It worked like a charm, Taylor said. "Were long-time users of cineSync. With cineSync, our clients had to install the software. Then wed send them the files, which they would have to download. It took time and a lot of handholding to get it right. With Frankie its so much easier. We just send a link and begin. This is the first job we used Frankie on and it made review so straightforward and so much faster."

The whole cruise ship sequence was shot in studio in Cape Town, with set extensions to create the sea, the wake of the ship and the sky. Yet, even more than the visuals, it was the process that Lebensfeld is most proud of. "Initially, the ad agency was hesitant to work with a company that wasnt local, he said. "They had found communicating between London and L.A. difficult in the past."

The producers at M&C Saatchi were very hands-on and particular about what they wanted. For example, there are scenes in one of the Virgin Holidays ads with Chinese lanter

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