Behind the scenes of adidas Formotion 360 series

Published On: June 21st, 2021

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In a recently published new product line campaign, adidas launched a set of 360 videos, created by agency Grow and Light Sail VR. Their post-production system of choice was SGO's full-finishing and color grading solution, Mistika Boutique.

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Matthew Celia, Co-founder at Light Sail VR and Director of adidas FORMOTION 360 series, says that the core idea of the project was to give women the opportunity to see how clothes move and fit across a variety of activities. This is something that can get lost in the traditional 2D approach, which is often filled with quick cuts and cropping that makes it hard for consumers to decide if the product is right for them. With 360 video, there is no hiding. What you see is authentic.

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VR format in tune with the product conceptSpotlighting different products from the FORMOTION collection, the four 360 videos allowed women to choose which person they wanted to follow and see how the product fits. For Matthew, it was all about giving the audience the freedom to watch who they want, when they want. It felt very in tune with the whole concept of FORMOTION, which I understood to be a product line designed by women, for women, that moves and shapes no matter what your body type is. I like that sense of empowerment and I feel that as a director, ceding control of the frame is a similar sense of empowerment for my audience. Let them see the product in action, full body, no cuts, and give them the freedom to pick who to follow.

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Mistika Boutique Inside and Out The three key functionalities of Mistika Boutique that were essential for the creatives on this project were VR Stitch, Latlong aware shapes in the color grade and easy XML import from Adobe Premiere Pro. Sometimes it is hard to visualize everything together, so to make better creative decisions, Matthew finds it helpful to be deeply involved in the post production process. Since it is a 360 video, there isn't editing persay, but I handled all of the nodal stitching and put all the pieces together from various members of my team (VFX compositing, graphics, sound, and color) to create the final product.

The team started and ended the post in Mistika Boutique. We brought in our raw footage, which was shot on the Blackmagic URSA Mini 12K and then transcoded to EXR sequences. The footage was captured using our custom nodal rig and due to the pandemic, we had a lot of individual plate shots. Each talent was actually shot separate from one another. In addition to the four talent plates, they also needed some clean ones for the ceiling and the rest of the lights that were going to be painted out later. This meant we needed rock solid stitch. In Mistika, we used the VR Stitch node to generate still frames of each plate and brought them into PTGui to create a stitching template, adds Matthew.

Once the template was completed and it was verified all of the plates unwrapped into a perfect stitch, they rendered them out individually to send to VFX, where some detailed compositing would be done to merge and blend everything together.

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The ultimate VR Color workflowWith the final composites, the project was brought back into Mistika Boutique for the color grade. Mistika's color tools are seriously impressive for VR work how quickly and easily the colorist was able to address the feedback and create shapes, isolate colors, pull out detail and create a very high quality look that we were looking for. All in, I found it to be a very impressive workflow and it made the creative process move quickly.

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For Jeff Sousa, Senior Colorist at Dungeon Beach, having (1) a compositing layer stack, (2) an immersive and moveable VR view, and (3) Mistika's full DI tools, all within the same interface, made this challenging grade achievable. We have these four women in 360 space and each has a picture-in-picture' overlay next to them, showcasing product detail but shot on a different camera against a different background. Of course, the color of the clothing needs to be consistent. Here the VR View and Evaltree Tag team nicely. With the agency creatives supervising a live session, I was able to literally look around the 360 space, frame up the talent next to their PIPs, then tweak the clothing in both environments using the fixed vectors. By simply clicking either on the 360 plate or on the PIP clip in the Evaltree, I was able to control the colors separately, all while viewing the seamless final composite until the clothing matched perfectly.

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Look creation: brand-consistent and product-focussedWith a brand like adidas, the team at Light Sail VR and Dungeon Beach knew the look needed to be consistent with the high level of quality in other 2D video assets. This is a huge challenge for 360 videos, as they are often captured with small sensor c

LINK:	https://www.sgo.es/adidas-formotion/...
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