MPCs Motion Design Studio turned to CINEMA 4D to explain the benefits of a digital lifestyle for Three Mobile customers
Flash is required! --
By Duncan Evans
MPCs Motion Design Studio, in collaboration with creative ad agency Boys and Girls and director Brett Foraker of production company RSA, was faced with the technical challenge of incorporating fast-moving CG elements into a single, 40-second camera take. The concept for the advert was, that through mobile phones everyone has access to many different digital applications. Conveying the benefits of having that digital lifestyle through the Three Mobile network was a challenge that started with HDRI and reference measurements taken on a cold street in Prague.
The hero figure of the film walks down a street, encountering other people and accessing social media, collecting music albums in Spotify, playing fantasy football and finally encountering a wall of Instagram photos.
The Motion Design Studio team, part of MPC, was lead by Eliot Hobdell with the efforts of 15 artists over a period of four weeks. CINEMA 4D R14 Studio was used for all the 3D elements in the 40-second spot, with the final piece put together in NUKE and then polished off in Flame.
Eliot commented, "It took a lot of R&D and Look Dev to get it all working, with various technical hurdles to overcome. In particular, we developed a bespoke voxel effect for the fantasy football section as well as sculpting multiple dynamic simulations for the Instagram section at the end. For all sections, we tried a lot of different looks and approaches before we settled on the final treatment."
The main focus throughout the spot was to get the real world and the CG world interconnected in a realistic fashion. The VFX work needed to fit seamlessly around the hero, as well as provide a driving force behind his journey down the street. In order to achieve this, the heros sightline and physical position were precisely measured to control how the CG elements were fitted around him. Eliot remarked, "The director, Brett Foraker, is extremely experienced in this kind of VFX work. We took his original treatment and storyboards and worked with him to develop the best techniques and toolsets to use."
The whole ad was a single-take shot, which created some challenges. The final take that was used was more than three seconds over length, and needed to be time-warped to match the required 40-second slot. This meant there were time-warping artifacts that had to be removed throughout the film. The Motion Design Studio pipeline had to accommodate this time-warp right from the start. So, the 3D camera track was created from the original plate and then the time-warp being used on the footage was applied to it. Lead Flame operator Franck Lambertz built a custom NUKE script to do this.
There were a number of technical challenges to overcome, starting with camera tracking and match-moving. These were particularly difficult for that section as there was a very shallow depth of field, a 180-degree camera swing and very little texture detail in the background. To overcome this, the camera track was done in sections that were then stitched together, mainly using Synth Eyes and PF track. As the hero walked along, the original concept was for the icons to form in the air around the heros head, but this impacted on his performance, especially when he was talking.
Instead, director Brett Foraker suggested there be an enhancement of the phone screen, in a heads-up display style. So, over the course of a week, they looked at numerous ways for how the icons could be re-worked into this shot. The trick then was to make the icons feel like they were connected to the swing of the phone in the heros hand while walking, but also moving in the air around him.
Having generated a camera track for the shot, the Motion Design Studio then used tracking markers placed on the hero to generate an object track of his movement in relation to the CG camera. This was then further adjusted by hand to give a tracking null for the movement of the icons that had a feel of them rolling with his body movement while also feeling connected to the phone that was out of shot. The other half of this section was as the hero encountered a group of young women, and this initiated the social media world. This showed the hero interacting with both women and the CG elements while adding someone to Facebook. The challenge here was tracking the geometry onto the heros shoulder and rotating the jacket texture to create the voxel effect for the Facebook thumbs up. The geometry was match-moved and then CINEMA 4Ds MoGraph was used to fill the volume with cubes. These were animated with effectors.
One of the more laborious tasks was painting out the tracking markers on the actors shoulders, arms and wrists, as well as the phone, for the first two sections of the shot for every frame of the 40-second advert. This was no fewer than 1,000 frames and, along with the markers, the body and hair of the hero had to be rotoscoped as well, while the entire street was modelled and geometry-matched. To round it off, there was also lighting, texturing and compositing.
Music has become increasingly digital and thats what has to be conveyed in the Spotify section. The idea was to enhance records that were dropped onto the set with CG extras. Also, the album cover that is actually caught in the shot, needed to be replaced and the sequence needed to be modified to show the albums breaking up into pixels as they came into contact with the floor. This is where CINEMA 4Ds aero/dynamics simulation and an XPresso script came into play. Manual animation was used to match digital doubles for the original records and an aerodynamics simulation was created for the extra records. A 2D planar track of album cover that the hero catches was created, and an XPresso script was set
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
MPCs Motion Design Studio turned to CINEMA 4D to explain the benefits of a digital lifestyle for Three Mobile customers
