What a fun spot to work on! When Go Film, LA, was asked to create this unusual, exciting promo for USA Network, they reached out to Fusion CI Studios for all the CG fx: water, fire, smoke, debris, bullets.
In addition to RealFlow for the water, Fusion used Maya + Blast Code and 3ds Max + Fume FX. We also did the modeling on this project which included creating different kinds of bullets, the fountain that gets smashed, and creating the whole top floor of the house.
The challenge was matching the practical fx to cg fx, which is never an easy task. For instance, water tends to have small scale ripples that are very hard to match and an explosion is much the same in this aspect. Explosions usually have a general character that must be re-created; they can be smokey, they can be fireballs, they can be dusty or they can be just lots of debris. This particular smokey, fire ball-like explosion spanned more than 800 frames, and was especially tough since it had to look good in very slow motion.
The most important factor in creating fx for this commercial was, of course, that we had to think in terms of reverse slow motion (a brilliant idea by director Andrews Jenkins) throughout the whole process. Try that first thing in the morning.... before coffee. Enjoy!
Director: Andrews Jenkins
Producer: Lisa Tauscher, Go Film
VFX Supervisor: Eric Rosenfeld
Sunset Edit:
Nazeli Kodjoian, Executive Producer
Howard Shur, Editor
Ken Mowe, Editor
Fusion:
Mike Wallner, Lead CG Artist
Mark Stasiuk, CG Supervisor
Lauren Millar, Executive Producer
