Helping to Build Business
Business Wales
Commercial
One single take, one location, one actor. As simple as it gets right? Well, almost.
For this TVC for Business Wales our friends at SBW Advertising wanted to use clones to show the many roles a business owner may have to take on when starting a business, and they wanted to know if we could make those clones happen. With the science and ethics of actual cloning being something of a hot potato, we decided the world of VFX may be the best approach.
Creating a clone is pretty much a rite of passage for any kid starting to get into VFX, and it’s super easy to do if you follow 2 rules: Don’t move the camera, and don’t have the clones overlap. Well we’re not kids anymore, so we decided to break both those rules.
A single unbroken shot in which our camera travels from an extreme closeup, all the way to a wide shot, all the while our clones pop in and out and overlap without a care for the poor mugs that have to put it all together in the edit (that’s us, we’re the mugs).
So, how do you do a camera move like that and not completely destroy any chance of being able to populate the frame with clones? The answer, is a robot. No this isn’t the beginning of a dystopian tale where machines take over (not yet at least), this is actually a clever bit of tech that allows us to repeat a camera move over and over again to pixel perfection. Taking on this role was our friends over at Mr MoCo, who brought along their futuristic looking Bolt arm, capable of moving a camera at a ridiculous 8 metres per second… or in this case meandering back slowly at around 0.2 metres per second.
We spent the main chunk of the shoot loading in, set dressing and lighting; as once we started rolling nothing in the frame could move even an inch (besides our lovely talent of course). With our camera move dialled in, all that was left was to repeat it over and over with our talent in different positions in the office. All in all, the actual filming process only took an hour or two, a testament to the importance of planning and preparation for a shoot of this nature. A quick load out and everyone was back home in time for tea.
Throw in a bilingual Voiceover, some time consuming masking and some downright groovy music and you’ve got yourself a TV ad ready to hit the screens.
