This commercial for Lucky Charms cereal required a scene with a superhero standing on a mountain top. Originally, my plan was to bring in real rocks or foam, and carve out an actual mountain top. My thinking was by using practical effects, it would give us a super cool realism and allow us to get dynamic angles that revealed the texture of the mountain surface.
My producer priced out the cost of materials needed to create the mountain top, and unfortunately it was beyond scope for both budget and time so instead we opted for a budget-friendly set of green steps.
Close enough, right?
What made this project different than other green screen projects I’ve worked on was for this shoot, the talent needed to physically be touching a surface that would later be replaced in post-production.
Here’s a still from a prior sci-fi film I did, Into Dusk, for which everything outside of the window was green screen, which was placed in post. But the actors never physically touch or interact with anything outside of the window.
The steps were swapped out by the folks at Splice, a post-production facility in Minneapolis, with a computer generated mountain top. In the final render, our superhero poses atop of the mountain as she raises her comic book to the heavens.
Below are the steps to get to the final product:
- my initial sketch
- camera and talent placement test
- actual shoot with talent in costume
- final render in finished spot
This spot was made for ULTRA CREATIVE, a creative studio that works with modern food brands, and GENERAL MILLS.
Directed by: Jason Ho
Production company: COMMITTEE FILMS.
Cinematographer: TJ SCHWINGLE.
Post-production graphics and environments: SPLICE.
Comic characters provided by: DC COMICS.
If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future blog post or would like to hire me for personal consultation on a video you’re making or if you’d like to hire me to make a video for you, feel free to contact me via the CONTACT page and I will get back to you as soon as I can. Thank you and keep creating.