S&M COMPLETE COMMERCIAL FOR CHEETHAMBELL JWT

SMOKE and Mirrors (S&M) 3-D have just completed a hard-hitting, stomach-turning commercial for Cheethambell JWT, Manchester, to launch the new ‘Submission’ ride at Alton Towers.
The 10-second advertisement was directed by Phil Taylor, from Vertica, from an original idea from Dave Bevan and Chris Gaffey, from Cheethambell JWT, who wanted to relate the kinetics of a Newton’s Cradle to the dynamics of the new ride.
To this end S&M 3-D created a CG Newton’s cradle to carry two ‘passengers’ through the motions of the ride as is swings through 360 degrees.
In order to keep the people 3-dimensional as they are carried through space S&M 3-D made novel use of cyberscans, whereby a series of heads with different expressions were created. These were swapped in a series of transitions to create the idea of a live action person within a computer-generated sphere.
The camera moves were pre-visualised by S&M 3-D's Phil Johnson using a basic CG model of the Newton’s Cradle and its environment. This was particularly helpful to the client for approval purposes and also for marrying technical information later in post production. On one particular shot, which involves a mutation between the cradle and the ride, it was important to match the two elements exactly, so a grid and pivot points were supplied to line up the real ride with the CG elements.
The final elements - CG, cyberscans and live action - were passed to Inferno artist Rob Moggach at S&M who finessed the final spot with a combination of focus pulls, graphics layers and grading, even adding fresh contact lenses to the actors.
The circular motion of the ‘Submission’ ride is such that riders are suspended upside down for several seconds. To convey this aspect of the ride, another version of the commercial was created by simply flipping it upside down. (CD)