Growing up in Miami in the 1980’s really inspired me to make this show. I was actually on a couple of episodes of the original Miami Vice back in the day. Here’s a shot of me with Sonny Crockett himself (I’m the little kid with the bowl haircut):

Here’s a look at a matte painting we put together to give the DP an idea of the lighting we were going for.  This same digital matte painting was used as the reference for the Art Department to create a large painted backdrop we flew in behind shots to avoid having to add more comp shots to our tight delivery schedule.

Here’s a look at the pier we had built on the set while we do final lighting tweaks:

Here’s a look at one of the shots in progress.  You can see how we’re using the painted backdrop to avoid doing a green screen comp shot by throwing it way out of focus and shooting it practical:

Here is a look at the very first rough cut of the spot we submitted to client.  It shows a bunch of other shots that didn’t make it into the final edit.  This rough cut is pre color correct and is minus effects and sound:

We crammed 19 different complicated set-ups chock full of visual effects in a 30 second spot.  And the only way we were able to get it done was with the amazing crew I was fortunate enough to work with.  Aside from the usual suspects at Big Machine, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my good friend Amanda for helping me find the best local crew positions that Vegas had to offer.

For each of our 19 set-ups we had “speedy”, our animated arrow character, in just about every one.  To make sure “speedy” had the exact lighting on his CG body that the environment around him did, we shot HDRI lighting reference maps in each individual set up.  This helped compositing immensely.  Here you can see our HDRI globe in scene.  In this shot you can also see we green-screened in the shot of the Vegas strip outside the window.

This is a shot of me arranging the blocking of the scene at the TOW (Top of the World) restaurant.  We used TOW to double for Lounge 107.  It provided a much better angle of the strip below.  We wanted the shot to go off right at ‘magic hour’ sunset.  So we were exposing our interior lights to match the exposure we calculated outside sunset would provide.  This was your typical mad dash for that 10 minutes of beautiful golden-hour light.  The best compliment I have gotten is that some people thought we comp’d in the background in this shot because it looks so fake and picture-esque… but it was all shot practically!  (this snap shot was taken about an hour before sunset while we were working out the camera angle and blocking so you’ll have to check out the final spot to see the effect we captured outside the window)

This is a shot of part of the set up we had for Shot 2: “Speedy” entering the casino.  Justin, our steadicam op, started on a platform we built for him to come in high and dutched as the doorman opened the door.  Over on the left you can see Jeremy, our AD, holding a scale arrow I had the Art Department build.  I would shoot the mock-up arrow moving through each scene so the animators could see a reference of how the real world lights of the set actually interacted with the surface of the arrow.

Shooting on the 7D:  I wanted to make a piece that had great cinematography and great effects.  The 7D is a solid DSLR but certainly has its issues that you have to be able to work around.  Yes, you can bolt on great glass but hand-holding the body is not recommended without a shoulder rig.  The body’s CG results in jittery frames that are impossible to fix in post.  In addition, the H.264 compression of the image doesn’t give you much latitude for color grade, so it is important to shoot tests if you want to end up with a special look and dial in a profile while you shoot that will result in the look you want after the color grade.

We built the tent set for the fortune teller in my back yard between my lemon tree, my lychee tree and my peach tree.  It was close quarters, but I wanted to try and control the environment of the interior as best I could before shooting the exterior scenes of the tent at the Hollywood Farmers market where things weren’t as confined.  In this photo, Jason Bistarky (our great production designer), is putting the finishing touches on the tent.  The interior was dressed to the 9’s and the exterior was dressed to let the right color and quality of light in.

A look inside the tent while we adjusted lighting snapped off my cam phone.

Ben, producer, back left.  Scotty running A Cam front and center.  Me on the right running B cam.  Kate sitting pretty.

The matte box rig we had at the carnival shoot kept falling apart in our hands.  Literally.  But we got through itl.

A look at the camera rig.  In the background on the floor on the blue sandbags you can see our 2nd 7D on standby.

Ben (producer) and I on set at the Hollywood Farmers Market.

Here are some before and after stills from the production.  Aside from the obvious vfx work, we did a heavy color grade and lots of skin blemish clean up.

For the Parkour spot I spent a lot of time shooting rehearsals and studying existing parkour footage to find the best way to capture this dynamic sequence.  What felt the best to me was to shoot the athletes doing their flips, spins and gymnastics with a smooth fluid camera. That approach allowed the action to really shine without being overshadowed by heavy-handed camera work.  Some quick kinetic shots were cut in for pacing but I wanted the big moves to play out smoothly. Steadicam operator Justin Browne did a great job of keeping up with these human spiders:

Here is the :15 cut down of the :30.  It has an alternate opening shot. POV style:

The incredibly talented David Elson and Clay Truesdell were our two runners.  They would practice the moves with crash pads several times until they were well warmed up and feeling good about the setup.  We’d then remove the pads and shoot.  Here’s a short clip of David practicing the big jump before we rolled:

Here is an animatic I did of the spot.  I shot this across the street from my studio with some co-workers to work out shot order, pacing and angles:

Here’s a look at the ‘button shot’ work-in-progress.  This is what the shot looked like before compositing, final animation and color grading:

The spot was color graded in Apple’s COLOR.  Here is a screenshot:

Here’s a short clip from Ryan’s casting.  He did a great job!  We cast long and hard for these two roles.  The casting, performance from the talent and location were the 3 main components to making this a successful spot:

Another key component in this spot’s success was the location.  We searched extensively for just the right place.  Ultimately, the colorful facade of the KIDS KARE DENTIST office in Hollywood made the perfect backdrop.  But a serious contender for the spots home for a few weeks was the Venice boardwalk at sunset.  While it is a beautiful place with gorgeous light and tons of personality, it was hard to shoot from the multiple angles we needed to cover this spot from.  While many locations along the boardwalk looked great from one single angle, it was difficult to find a place suitable for this project that would photograph well from multiple angles.  Here are a few clips from Venice at sunset from my initial scout.  (Thanks for keeping me company, Vanessa.. you were a beautiful stand-in!):

DP, Thomas Stanton manhandling the Canon 7D into submission. AC, Ryan pulling focus:

Here’s a snap right after we wrapped.  (Left to right:  Ryan, me, Nandi, Jon, Ken, Scotty)  Thank you guys!

To help the client understand how I see the agency boards coming to life, I present storyboards back showing the shots I see best telling their story:

Once awarded, the 1st step is a crude text/timing edit to plot out a rough idea of shots and shot lengths:

After that, an animatic is put together to show basic camera angles and camera movement.  This project was on an extremely accelerated schedule so I whipped this animatic together on the plane while en route to the casino in Oklahoma.  Usually these look far more refined.  It’s incredibly  important to have this sort of visual reference on the tech scout to show the DP and gaffer exactly what the shots are going to be so I’d rather have a crude animatic than no animatic at all:

At the tech scout, I crudely shot the boards to continue to get a sense of timing, pace and the rhythm of the spot:

While on location in OK, the design studio back in Los Angeles was working on dialing in the character designs.  Here is a look at some of the exploration:

A look at the faces  that get mapped onto the card heads for sync dialogue:

A look at the CG elements of shot 7 before composite.  You can see the shot has been fed the tracking data from the live action plate – generating a matching camera move:

This is what some of the rigging of one of the characters looked like:

Working out the final look of the spot with Big Machine’s senior designer was an incredibly fun process.  The difficult thing was verbally articulating the idea I had in my head of the car peeling open like a banana as the heart and soul of it floated out.  So we ended up coming up with these crude boards that did the trick and served as our road map for the animation:

Here is a look at the original video I shot on the location scout up in Mullholland:

And here is a look at the 1st rough cut of the plate shots without effects:

Through Big Machine we got invited to present the spot to a packed auditorium at Febuary’s DMALA (Digital Media Artists Los Angeles) meeting.  We spoke about the creative process and some of the technical achievements in the project.  Here are some photos from that: