The Heat Is On For Rushes

Post production company Rushes are working with agency and production company Quietstorm on the current advertising campaign for 'Heat' magazine, which involves tight deadlines and weekly delivery to the client.
The amusing spots depict a friendly 'to-the-rescue' shopkeeper, restoring women's ability to gossip through the power of 'Heat' magazine.
Commenting on the campaign, Rushes' VFX Artist Brian Carbin described the process and the beauty of using Smoke on the project: "We have fairly tight deadlines to work to as the advert will be repeated every Friday for the next 8-10 weeks. Every week artwork for a new cover and inside spread is sent over and dropped into the composite. The beauty of doing this in Smoke is the speed at which this can be turned around each week using the timeline. The new footage is dropped into the setup straight on the timeline. We also can keep all the previous weeks' renders on a lower layer in the timeline giving the client quick access to see every version since the original was created. In addition, titles and legals can be added and changed as a soft effect without the need to render them directly to pictures. All one click away, in realtime, for fast, efficient delivery to the client.
"Within each main spot we've hard to replace the inside pages and a cover. This was tricky, because it had to be tracked and deformed using 2D artwork made to look like the original glossy paper it was replacing. We had multiple suites working on this and with the addition of Action (a compositing node), Smoke is proving truly compatible with Flame."
Brian is working closely with fellow Rushes' VFX Artist Adam Watson, working in Flame and Rushes' Colourist Adrian Seery is grading the commercials.
Further information is available at: www.rushes.co.uk.
(KMcA/JM)