Milagro Post Brings Dodge 'Fantasticar' To Life

Milagro Post has completed a sleek DI project for a BBDO Detroit spot, directed by Dana Christiaansen of Plum Productions, for the upcoming movie, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
The 30 second theatrical and television ad features the Fantastic 4’s futuristic vehicle, Fantasticar, dreamed up by Dodge that travels 500 miles an hour, sports fire-resistant seating and boasts Dodge’s muscle car inspired Hemi engine.
Throughout the spot the narration refers to the levitating (comic book) vehicle as a modern day production car that happens to experience proton powered acceleration and, “oh, it can fly!”
“The spot was shot live action using a fully designed prop car including the recognizable Dodge Ram logo on the grill,” said Michael Suggs, Milagro Post co-owner. “The only CG was at the end when the car flies around the Fantastic 4 logo ending the spot.”
The ad starts off with tight beauty shots of the car. The voice over describes the vehicle’s capabilities as the camera scans the attractive hood and side of the car. As the spot progresses the viewer sees wider shots of the vehicle, revealing its science fiction-like origin.
Milagro Post used their DI pipeline for the project. The spot was shot on 35mm film and scanned into Milagro Post’s film SAN via their Spirit Datacine as 2K data files.
The offline edit list was imported into the Quantel iQ where it was conformed.
DI Colorist, Rick Unger, performed colour grading on the Quantel Pablo.
The Quantel eQ was used for rig and wire removal, and was used to add heat waves underneath the car for levitation effects.
Suggs explained the DI process: “This was a perfect job for our facility due to our DI workflow. We made a 2K universal digital master in order to create a multitude of deliverables which included cinema scope and flat versions for theatrical release, as well as HD and SD for broadcast.”
DI Colorist Rick Unger explains the workflow. “While grading the spot, any scenes that needed cleanup, rig removal or comps were grabbed from the film SAN by the eQ. They could do their work while I continued to grade the spot.
The finished scenes were sent to me and I dropped them on my timeline and applied the colour setups I had established. These parallel processes permitted us to time-compress the whole project while maintaining the integrity of the end result,” said Unger.
“The Fantasticar spot was a high profile project with complex deliverables,” said Broadcast Creative Director, Mike Menlo, BBDO Detroit. “We needed a film master plus HD and SD broadcast masters, with 5.1 Dolby Surround mixes. I knew that Milagro Post had expertise in the creation and integration of theatrical content, so they were a perfect fit. The theatre screening looked and sounded great. Milagro Post really delivered.”
The Milagro Post team included Editor, Kevin O’Brien; DI Colorist, Rick Unger; Flint artist, Paula Carlson and eQ artist, Brent Edwards.
(SP)