Case Study

Carbon is celebrating the arrival of springtime with director Amr Singh and a perfectly executed ‘one-er’ – a single take from start to finish. The campaign for Church’s Chicken and Brenner Agency features the many ways a neighborhood comes alive again in spring – block parties, jumping ropes, and… surf’n’turf!

For our VFX and design work, Carbon’s Blake Druery and Matt Beharry were at the helm as Co-Creative Directors. “This was a fun spot!” says Blake. “The main goal was to balance two key elements: the fact that the spot was shot as a one-er, and the need to give our fun poppy design elements room to shine without distracting from the action.”

“For the one-er, we had a narrow window of perfect lighting – the moment the sun was cutting a beautiful big strip through the square, reflecting off a nearby building, and creating those lovely caustic reflections. Hats off to Amr for his clear vision and thoughtful planning, and to our DP Dallas Sterling and the rest of the crew for the skill and precision they brought to pulling it off so seamlessly! From the tricky handoff of the crane arm to the handheld, to choosing the moment of perfect lighting, it was amazing to watch it all come together. I fully expected we’d have to stitch together a couple of takes to get what we wanted, but it’s a true one-shot!”

With the perfect one-er locked, back at the Carbon studio Matt and team set about jumping into styleframes for our hand-drawn, graffiti-inspired animations. Matt explains, “We picked out five hero moments to begin our design frames, and created a hand drawn style that expanded on Church’s existing motifs – stars, lightning bolts, line elements and a bold vibrant color palette. Once we had locked down the core design language and prominent visual moments we dug into animation. Focusing our attention on creating energetic moments that highlighted the talent and food and didn’t overpower the scene.”

Rather than floating in midair, what really adds extra life to the animations is that they interact realistically with the environment. Blake explains, “To make this work, I scanned the entire courtyard and street area, plus some key objects like the scooter. Properly surveying the scene helped our 3D trackers to achieve a super solid camera track, making it easier to place detailed models into the scene for compositing. That’s why you can see the animation flow so smoothly and stick naturally to the scooter, buildings, windows, road, and curbs as the camera moves around.”

Get a closer look at those seamless animations right here… Shout out to Kappock Crew, Amr and team for bringing us on for this juicy campaign.