Toyota Avanza
| Title | Bird |
|---|---|
| Director | Paul Baiguerra |
| D.O.P. | Kaka Tong |
| Production Company | Flash Films Jakarta |
| Production Producer | Yusuf Raharjo |
| Agency | Saatchi & Saatchi Jakarta |
| Creative | James Bernardo |
| Agency Producer | Mia Farizza |
| Post Producer | Dixie Wu |
| Post Supervisor | Damien Yang |
| Editor | Marshall |
| Colorist | Kamal Gani |
| Lead Compositor | Damien Yang |
| Compositor | Leong Beng Wee |
| CG Animator | Pawel Orzechowski |
| CG Supervisor | Damien Yang |
| Composer | Mike B |
| Sound | Mike B |
Saatchi & Saatchi’s creative team of CD James Bernardo, Art Director Grace Lingga and Copywriter Ichwan Rinaldi, expertly stewarded by Executive AV Producer Mia Farizza effectively leverage tongue-in-cheek humour and an unexpected twist to make this car spot truly stand out from the crowd.
‘When the spot was run at the press launch and the dealer launch the results were the same. Everyone laughed their guts out.’ commented Bernardo.
Director Paul Baiguerra, enlisted to bring the storyboard to life explains, ‘I wanted to keep the execution as simple as possible so the idea could speak for itself’.
The idea behind the spot is straightforward; we open to see an Avanza owner lovingly and devotedly cleaning his new car. The viewer is lulled by the soft reassuring music and the gentle cleaning actions of the car owner. Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, a passing pigeon deposits a ‘present’ on the roof of the car. To everyone’s amazement the pigeon then proceeds to land on the roof of the car and wipe away the offending item before flying off.
With turnaround time for the commercial extremely tight, the option of a full, photo-realistic 3D pigeon was not viable so Director Paul Baiguerra and the BMD VFX team switched their efforts to devising a hybrid flesh & CG bird of Frankensteinian design. A real pigeon would therefore be needed to fly into frame, settle on the car roof and fly out. The ‘wiping wing’ action would need to be created and composited in post.
To speed up CG for the VFX scenes the 3D pigeon wing was designed and created in advance of the shoot by BMD’s character animator Pawel Orzechowski. BMD VFX Director Damien Yang then attended the shoot to ensure appropriate angles of the hero pigeon were captured that would work with the 3D pigeon wing.
Despite the concept of the spot being refreshingly simple the production did have its fair share of trials and tribulations the most challenging of which came from some unexpected performance issues with the acting talent.
‘We were having a very hard time getting the actor to look like he was cleaning the car properly. Turns out he doesn’t drive and has never cleaned a car in his life – that’ll teach me to ask the most obvious questions upfront’, explained Director Paul Baiguerra
Conversely, the hero pigeon had no such performance problems. Jakarta production company Flash Films sourced a professional pigeon wrangler who selected a bird with the requisite acting talent and brought him and his life-long mate to the shoot location for acclimatization several days before the shoot. During the shoot itself the star performer’s female counterpart was positioned just out of frame to attract our hero bird to hit his mark, which he did, every time.
With the hero pigeon’s performance in the bag it was then the job of Blackmagic Design’s VFX team, led by Yang to convincingly composite the 3D pigeon wing together with the live bird. When offline was completed Orzechowski, spent five days refining and perfecting the animation, texturing and lighting of the CG wing before passing it to Yang for final compositing.
During final compositing, the hero pigeon’s head was repositioned, bionic wing attached and additional loose downy feathers and reflections were added to create the final effect.
