VTR deliver invisible effects for Sugar Puffs

Commercials and digital film postproduction house VTR have created a host of invisible visual effects for an amusing new television commercial for Quaker Sugar Puffs.
Entitled 'Skateboard', the ad features a cunning contraption devised by the Honey Monster, which wakes him up and then delivers a fresh bowl of Sugar Puffs to his breakfast table – all in one shot.
The action opens on an old-fashioned alarm clock on a kitchen top. As the clock strikes eight o’clock, the alarm goes off and the clock begins to vibrate and move along the surface where it bumps into a tea caddy. A small kitchen weight falls from the caddy on to a wooden spoon, balancing across a rolling pin, which flicks up and switches on a blender. The vibrating blender triggers an orange suspended from a string, which swings into rack full of plates, creating a domino effect. A bowl tumbles from the rack onto a skateboard device made from kitchen implements, which rolls past a radio, flicking on some music.
The Honey Monster emerges from his bedroom towards the contraption he has built. The skateboard delivers the bowl onto weighted see saw next to a large packet of Sugar Puffs, which tip over and fill the bowl with cereal. The bowl then slides off the see saw, on to a tilting ironing board and on to the kitchen table, where it hits a trip wire causing a bottle of milk to tip and neatly fill the bowl with milk.
Cut to the Honey Monster as he sits down to enjoy a spoonful of his favourite breakfast cereal.
The commercial was directed by Barney Cokeliss at Godman.
In postproduction, following a telecine grade and transfer by Tareq, VTR’s flame team of Tim Davies, Rob Ellis, and Simon Hall set about seamlessly combining a range of motion control passes of the action. This involved meticulous matting of different elements, invisible morphs, rig removal and subtle retiming, before compositing the results over a selected take of the Honey Monster.
Flame post production was made easier by the fact that Davies had attended the motion control shoot with Discreet’s combustion compositor on a laptop to capture images from the video assist and instantly check they would combine seamlessly. The commercial was pre-visualised in flame from a one-light telecine session, and this was used as a reference guide for the final version.
(GB)