Street lights up Sky at MPC

Paul Street has directed the latest UK Sky campaign, 'Everyday Choices,' posted at MPC.
The campaign consists of 1 x 60, 2 x 50 and 1 x 30 second commercials.
The commercials were shot in Cape Town, the Namibian desert and Victoria Falls. Lead Inferno artist Paul Bayliss attended the shoot along with post producer, Alex Webster.
The campaign features people in everyday locations, a travel agent’s, a sweet shop, a supermarket, a pub, and demonstrates how they can be transported into another dimension and location through the power of the various Sky channels. The commercials end with the strapline 'Sky. Stay in and go somewhere different.'
MPC created all of the 3D effects for the campaign in Maya and Renderman over a five-week period.
Director Paul Street wanted all of the objects to look real and to stand up to close scrutiny – quite a challenge in the given timescale.
The key 3D effects appear in the sweet shop and supermarket scenes. In the sweet shop, a young boy gazes, awestruck, into sweet jars, all of which contain items to reflect the channels that Sky offers. A 3D tornado was created, consisting of debris and dust – this then destroys a 3D house and car – all within the confines of the sweet jar. The shark shots consisted of a mix of CG elements and archive footage. MPC also created 3D giraffes, elephants and a rocket for the supermarket sequence. A new fluids feature in Maya was used to generate the smoke and fire omitted by the rocket as it launches.
The majority of post in 2D involved seamless compositing of the 3D elements, tracking and morphing between the different scenarios.
In the sweet shop, images were tracked into the sweet jars, reflections were added and a glass effect warp was given to the objects inside. Combustion was used to remove tracking markers and wires in the sweet jars. Crowd replication for the cricket ground was also added in post, using Inferno. In the supermarket sequence, Combustion was used to rotoscope and isolate the motorbike riders, cars and people that appear on the shelves and all of the 3D elements were composited in Inferno. The morphing between background transitions were also completed in post.
Paul Street allowed colourist Jean-Clement Soret the creative freedom to explore a number of options to create the best look for the ads.
The grade provides a stylish, rich feel to the campaign with colourful contrasts.
The first of the ads aired on November 4.
(GB)