Client. SA Lotteries    Agency. KWP!   Production Company. Resin   Director. Grant Lovering
Resin. Treatment, Direction, Production, Set, Character & Production Design, Editorial, 3D, Compositing, Grade

The first in a series of commercials for Powerball introduce Thor, a laconic Aussie Thor who stands for all things powerful. After all Thursday was named after Thor and Thursday is Powerball.

Our treatment was based on a composite live action and CG execution. We wanted to create a fantasy like world high above in the heavens where Thor sits back and amuses himself. We developed the idea of some additional characters that keep Thor company, including Powerballs from a bygone era and a couple of large reptiles. The set we designed was inspired by Celtic iconography and granite like relics. The scales established enhanced the stature of Thor.

While casting for the role of Thor, we worked with our production team designing Thor’s costume and built a green screen version of Thor’s throne for the shoot. Meanwhile our 3D department was busily working away at building the 3D set and other characters that feature. We decided to build a full pre-vis of the commercial prior to the shoot which gave us the opportunity to experiment with the shot composition and camera movement and put together some rough edits of how the commercial could be cut together. This was an enormous benefit demonstrating our vision to agency, client and was vital on set to demonstrate to the DOP and grips what we were after. For the shoot we filmed on the 4K RED camera.

Post shoot, an enormous amount of 3D tracking, keying, roto, and compositing work, while 3D continued, moving to animation and refining of lighting and texturing. We also set about creating animated matte paintings for the skies, CG generated lightning and effects for the Powerball reveal.

As everything came together something happened that we didn’t expect with a project of this magnitude. Finished on time without any late nights.

Stay tuned for the next in the series.