LONDON — Framestore (www.framestore.com) helped an army of purple Joyville workers take to the sky for Fallon’s latest Cadbury's commercial. The spot shows a team of Joyville workers appearing from secret locations throughout the town and then launching a fleet of zeppelins from which they deliver that candy-makers light new Bubbly chocolate bar.
Framestore’s VFX team was led by Ben Cronin (2D) and Robert Kolbeins (CG). Effects were used as a way of adding scaleto director Tom Kuntz’s quirky vision. Framestore’s 2D work included green creen compositing, clean up and compositing of in-camera art-department plates. The CG department was challenged with creating a multitude of zeppelins, chocolaty parachutes, air-bound men and flying cars.
The team used references from Werner Herzog's The White Diamond, combined with Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion car as a starting point for R&D. Once the look had been narrowed down and approved by Kuntz, work began on building the mother zeppelin, which went on to set the design for the ad’s many other elements. In total, the CG team crafted more than ten zeppelins and hundreds of hand and procedurally animated chocolate parachutes. They also recreated the live action inflated men and cars in CG to match the plates.
The production’s came together in just four weeks. Amoung the challenges was giving the Joyville workers and their stylized machines a feel that suggested height and scale.
Film was shot in a wintery Richmond Park by DP Lasse Frank. Lasse worked with Framestore’s colorist Steffan Perry to grade the film with the halcyon feel of a lo-con print. In fact, because the schedule did not allow for a final film print, Framestore’s VFX team used this lo-con look as a stylistic inspiration for their digital environments.