Take4D used to create Virgin Atlantic £6m global advertising campaign
Virgin Atlantic Commercial
Sliding Down The Bags
Virgin Atlantic has launched its latest advertising spot, created by RKCR/Y&R and directed by Traktor, to promote the airline’s ‘it’ factor. The 90 second TV and cinema spot has been produced by Jody Allison at RKCR/Y&R and David Stewart at Partizan, withMPC providing the post including a comprehensive pre-viz, extensive compositing and environment work.
A complete pre-viz helped determine the timing of the shots, camera moves, and transitions between scenes. Filming took place during 6 days at Pinewood, using multiple stages.
The opening shot presented a challenge. All the elements were shot green screen using motion control, by Motion Control Cameras Ltd, and integrated in Post. For the small people sliding down the suitcases, a practical to-scale platform was built, and the talent was filmed using Take4D to modify the camera move derived from the original Girls plate.
The plate move needed to be localised and scaled up x6. Modifying the original motion control data in this way ensured that exactly the same camera descent down the case would be followed although on a much larger scale. The shot was complicated by the need to accelerate and decelerate the heavy motion control rig in a very short period of time, so modification to the slide were required to ensure the shot could be achieved within the rigs capabilities. Take4D allowed the larger motion control move to be repeatedly and accurately simulated for different slides and move modifications until a solution was found that could be achieved by the real mechanical properties of the motion control rig. Raising the angle of the slope helped match the original cases but introduced a safety aspect since the talents were to drop off the end onto a concrete floor. A harness and abseiling descender line were therefore used to help control their rate of descent. With the duration of the shot fixed from the original plate, it was down to the talent, the stunt coordinator Jeff Hewitt-Davis, and AD to get the timing correct to maintain framing on the person as they went down the slide.
The shot was repeated a number of times with different talent to populate all the cases in the scene, and the footage cleaned and composited by MPC.
