This week's Hotshot sees Nokia launch its open source Maemo 5 software-driven N900 smartphone with an online film courtesy of director David Masters and The Mill's CG wizards, Bif.
The spot, which nods towards Chris Cunningham's might-morphing PSP commercial (as well as his much darker short, Rubber Johnny), shows the view from behind a two-way mirror as a focus group unpack their thoughts on the new phone. As the film progresses things take a turn towards the surreal, with an unexpected change of direction.
Working closely with David Masters from experiential marketing agency Jack Morton, The Mill's CG trio of Fabrice Le Nezet, Francois Roisin and Jules Janaud (aka Bif) turned their hand to augmenting the live action footage. Animation tests were conducted a week before the shoot, with rehearsals generating rough footage to begin the pre-viz process.
"There was a lot of discussion regarding what we could and couldn't shoot given the budget and time constraints," reveals Roisin. "For example, working with a locked off framing helped simplify the CG work, as did little details like having the main actor wear a black jumper to smooth the transition and integrate it with the first section of the film."
With a limited amount of time to work on the project - under a month from start to finish - there was no room to create an animatic in advance. According to Janaud, the CG elements were driven by the actors' movements, "which meant we couldn't pin down any details of the final sequence until the action had been captured on film."
The finished film, The Journey Starts Here, went live on the Maemo Project site last week
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