Boomerang Television was commissioned to create the new watch commercial, featuring a dancer who moves in time to his own heartbeat, which is being monitored and displayed by the device. Dylan Wyn Davies, executive producer at Boomerang approached UK-based Rhodri Shaw, now director of Transition Video Ltd, to create the 3D visuals and projection mapping.
"Boomerang wanted 3D visuals that went in time with the music, accelerating and slowing down, representing the heartbeat BPM monitor feature on the watch," says Shaw. "I brought in Kaine Van Riel from Made Up Ltd to create custom 4k resolution content for the film."
The team decided to use an unfinished underground theatre in a secret location in central London for the shoot.
"We laser measured up the theatre to the cm, and Kaine created a 3D model within 3DS Max, which we then imported into an Avolites Ai S4 media server, using a second S4 for backup," explains Shaw.
Ai's technical support expert Arran Rothwell Eyre assisted with the preparation and was on-site for the shoot. "The model created by Kaine was very accurate, which allowed us to make good use of the Automap feature in Ai to greatly speed up the mapping process, which could have otherwise been very complex," he says.
Shaw continues, "I chose Ai for this project as I wanted to see what the machine was capable of. I attended a two-day training course with Arran at Avolites and then went straight into this project the following week. I was blown away by the power of the Ai S4 and its user-friendly interface."
(Jim Evans)
