Framestore CFC complete BA spot

Created by Ed Edwards and Dave Masterman at BBH and directed by Daniel Kleinman for Kleinman Productions, 'Clouds' is a new spot for British Airways currently appearing in 30 and 40 second versions in markets that include the UK, the Middle East and Africa.
Framestore CFC created the spot's ethereal and lovely visual effects.
Clouds emphasises both the value and the customer care offered by BA, and it does this by showing the pleasure and wonder still inherent in the miracle of flight - pleasures available to the carefree, pampered BA customer. The spot starts with establishing shots of a BA jet speeding through and above a sea of clouds. The clouds themselves are then transformed, becoming a school of dolphins that frolic around the plane. We then cut to a young child gazing out of the windows of the plane, and realise that we are seeing the clouds through his eyes.
"We believe your holiday should start before you arrive. You're our guest," says the voiceover, going on to enumerate the ways that BA make this happen, while we go deeper into the boy's fantasy, with the cloud-dolphins 'submerging' into a series of 'aerial underwater' shots. The spot concludes with a serene shot of the plane heading into a sunset.
VFX Supervisor William Bartlett supervised the project for Framestore CFC, attending the shoots and leading the Inferno work, while the CG cloud creatures themselves (and the jet seen in many of the shots) were created by a ten-person crew from the company's 3D Commercials team, headed by CG Supervisor, Dominic Parker.
The one-day aerial shoot took place in March 2006, with the aim of capturing as much backplate material as possible. As is so often the case, it was not as straightforward as it sounds. Bartlett said: "We needed a plane from which hi-res images could be shot above the clouds. The only one like that in the UK could only support up to a 16mm camera, so we went to L.A. Unfortunately, that city lived up to its reputation for sunshine and blue skies on our shoot day. But we had good weather information, and so we headed north, cloud hunting. We ended up trolling some 1100 miles up the West Coast to find usable clouds, eventually landing in Seattle that evening."
Bartlett also supervised three further days of shooting at Black Island studios, two for the aeroplane interiors, and one spent shooting overhead shots of dry ice and snapping high-speed pictures of small explosive charges being detonated – invaluable elements in the final compositions.
There were two main 3D elements in Clouds – the jet which we see cruising the skies, and the dolphins themselves. One of the advantages that Framestore CFC offers its artists and operators is that of the cross-fertilisation of techniques between film and television. Thus the Commercials team hit the air running, so to speak, when they were able to use a cloud-making tool that the company's film team had developed - initially for Thunderbirds, and also used on the forthcoming X-Men: The Final Stand and Superman Returns.
With a gentle rendition of 'Leaving on a Jet Plane' acting as the perfect accompaniment to the balletic Bottlenoses, Framestore CFC have once again produced some startlingly lovely imagery to complement a highly original script.
(GB)