This hefty project was a TV ad & print campgain for Betfair, for which I ended up leading the design, animation, motion/camera tracking, compositing, the lot. Not easy, or quick to do given the amount on my plate at the time, but it still looks the part and holds up well.

What I did:

Camera tracking, animation, compositing, design. I was on-site for at the shoot on the day, taking reference photos, measuring distances from lights to the subject, the height of the tables, etc. to help get an accurate lighting set-up later on in post.

How I did it:

I had been keen to work on a camera tracking/matchmoving project like this for a while, so I was stoked when Skinflicks came to me to help out and get it all done.

I initially started on the camera tracking using The Foundry’s Cameratracker plug-in for a couple of test beforehand and it all seemed to work out fine with DSLR footage.  When it came down to doing it with the final edit, Cameratracker gave up the ghost.  Not. A. Chance.  I tried image sequences, different formats & codecs, nothing.  Panic kicks in.  Next thing was to look into what else I can use/buy to get it done and that was Syntheyes, which I’d never used before.  I spent about 2 days tracking and finessing the 3 shots until I was sure it was all ok

Trying to work out how to model and animate a believable stadium, football shirts and coin dynamics in C4D took a while, gradually whittling away until it all took shape before compositing it all in AE.

Needless to say, this entire project, which also included a series of 4 print posters and a digital poster for use on screens in various salubrious & snazzy locales, took a lot of time to get right and was by no means easy. Saying that, in doing so, I picked up a wealth of new tricks and workflows, which is always a good thing.

Credits:

Dir: Dan Henshaw
Prod: Chris Massey
Prod Co: Skin Flicks
DoP: Brian Fawcett
Editor: Ryan Boucher
3D Artist: Ciaran O’Connor
Sound Design: Saul Richards