M&S 'Christmas Visitor'
My first project at Framestore, first project with Daniel Kleinman and a Paddington project! That is luck.
Nov 08, 2017
3 min read
Director: Daniel Kleinman
Agency: Grey London
Production: Rattling Stick
Client: Marks & Spencer
Over the years, I have admired Daniel Kleinman's work and finally had the opportunity to work on one of his projects... and what a treat this one was.
From the start, it was obvious that the responsibility of handling such a project respectfully, especially considering Paddington 2 is around the corner, would be the main issue I face.
The planning was especially precise, given the need to get a small army of artists, and given that we decided to use the film asset itself, we had to do it in a super secure film environment. Which meant a lot of learning about their custom tools.
The previsualization was done by the guys at The Third Floor, under the command of Daniel Kleinman, literally nailed the whole thing to the point that we left very few questions unanswered for the shoot.
For this reason, and given the amount of planning, the shoot was one of the easiest parts of the project (and it was big). Ben Cronin, the other Creative Director in advertising and I attended the shoot and covered all of it, from camera, transitions, data gathering, cinematography questions, animation questions and whatnot.
The main tasks were to set extensions of London's most magical streets, winter FX and of course, the hero character Paddington in his adventures.
Also, we did a ton of matte paintings for the sky.
During the shoot, we constructed many set elements for us to extend and enhance.
The process of animation itself relied on the super-custom Maya-based pipeline in Film that made churning shots a breeze. Sure, setting things up required some expert guidance, but we had a proper ATD from film to help us, so the process was great.
During the reviews, we kept watching the assets come to life based on scans, photo references and photogrammetry as well as our own designs.
The most interesting part was interacting with the guys in Film and especially their animation director, Pablo Grillo, who assisted us in understanding the character to produce the animation in such a way that felt part of the movie.
It was a feast for me to jump straight into such a complex job in such an alien pipeline, with massive learnings that I take with me to the next project, and I could not ask for a better start.
Thanks, everyone, for helping. Great job.