Framestore CFC complete Dairy Crest spot

'Cityside', the new spot for Dairy Crest's Country Life Spreadable butter - created by Grey Advertising, produced by Outsider Films and directed by ‘Dom and Nic’ - features some truly amazing creature animation from Framestore CFC.
Framestore CFC's Commercials 3D team have been enjoying a highly fruitful and prolific relationship with top directorial team Dom and Nic of late. 2005 alone has already seen the internationally acclaimed 'Hector's Life' spot for Renault Espace and the brilliantly dark promo for the Chemical Brothers' 'Believe' single. Now the roll continues, with a spot that features a host of countryside critters – rabbits, squirrels, hedgehogs and assorted birds – all lending a hand to a beleaguered mum facing the post-breakfast clean-up.
The spot opens with the heroine seeing the kids off to school and finding herself left with a very messy kitchen. She pauses to butter a slice of toast with Dairy Crest's Country Life Spreadable, and as she does so a benevolent invasion of country life forms comes pouring through her open window. In addition to the CG creatures, there are also real animals to be seen - a duck, ducklings and a walk-on part for a lamb. Busying themselves around her, the creatures take on a variety of tasks, each after their own fashion: a rabbit buffs an ornament with its tail, a pair of hedgehogs roll themselves through some spilled cereal, picking it up with their spines, and so on. As the last morsel of toast is consumed, the animals – mission accomplished - leave the way they came in.
This intricately choreographed and richly animated spot was created in just 12 weeks by a 15-strong team of Framestore CFC artists, animators, and technicians.
The two-day shoot at Black Island Studios in Acton was supervised by Mike McGee and Jake Mengers for Framestore CFC, and they ensured that all the necessary plates and elements were collected.
Mengers, who supervised the modelling, fur and lighting of the creatures, said: "We'd pre-vized the spot in the usual way, with rough grey-scale models, and had come up with a sort of wish-list of things that might go in. Dom and Nic were quite clear that they wanted a high level of interaction – so the creatures needed to be aware of each other and react accordingly. This made our task trickier, with all the interacting shadows etc. What we discovered early on was that we had to avoid having too much going on at once. If you create an overly busy visual environment, it just looks a mess. So we refined the activities down to a point where the spot still reads well on a single viewing, but also really repays repeated scrutiny. It's the same balancing act that Pixar manage to do so well in their films."
(GB)