Press release from The Lab Sydney
Nunn brought a concept into The Lab which the team there quickly began to collaborate on. He said, “Solagard has always been about protecting your home from the sun’s harsh rays. Brand Central had suggested pulling all the various technologies that go into the paint together under the name ‘Total Protection Technology’ which was subsequently added to the can design. In addition to protecting your home from the sun, the technology helped the paint protect in all weather – hot, cold, wet etc. So the new commercial was to be about the technology and to not just show the hot Australian sun – as all previous Solagard commercials had focused on – but to show all weather extremes.”
The Lab’s Creative Director and Co-Director on the project, Garry Jacques said, “Wattyl had lots of ideas to choose from but they really liked the one that Graham had initially come up with. So Graham, our Producer on the TVC Linda Lum and I brainstormed the idea. I then produced some boards which were presented to Wattyl and their agency Brand Central.”
The idea that Nunn and the team from the Lab had developed involved a warehouse with robotic machinery that was set up to test a house coated in new Wattyl Solagard. The tests or ‘torture tests’ as they became to be known, involved all the elements under the sun – literally.
Nunn said, “I thought from the beginning that there might be a need to “show” the technology – a cross-section of the paint surface at work, resisting the elements or something like that – and that part of the spot might involve 3D animation. Because the budget was tight, it made sense to talk with people who know what is and isn’t achievable in 3D and I thought of the Lab. I had had a good experience with them previously on a fairly tight budget RAMS commercial which involved a lot of 3D. I’ve also thought for some years now that the best collaboration when making TV commercials isn’t agency writer and agency art director trying to come up with the idea, it’s agency creative working in collaboration with the film creative (usually the director) from the very start. So I have no problem kicking first thoughts around with production people. To me, it makes even more sense to do that these days when so many commercials – and major movies for that matter – have such a high 3D component. The guys on the production and post production sides can help you develop concepts that maximise what you’ve got without being unrealistic or over-ambitious.”
The Lab’s Head of 3D and Co-Director on the project, Clinton Downs said, “We did an animatic to set the timings and also help the client see the visuals first before deciding on the level of voiceover. This really helped as many of these commercials are often full of words and the effects are lost.”
A full lighting scenario was created at the beginning of the TVC and each demo weather element (or torture test) was then equally spaced throughout the spot.
Downs added, “This project was quite unique as it kept evolving throughout. We had the painting of the house and in effect the whole first half of the spot keep changing with sections being altered and new ideas created. We added in a graphic highlighting Wattyl’s Total Protection Technology to then help join the house to the weather sequence. Full 3D jobs like these often look terrible until right at the last moment when it all comes together. So, to demonstrate the 3D process to the client we held a pre-production meeting and used our recent work on Air Wick as an example.”
The pre-production meeting served to detail not only the 3D process but also create a level of comfort and confidence in the way the spot was going to be handled.
Graham Nunn added, “Obviously, the Lab contributed to the concept in the very first instance – it’s as much Garry and Linda’s idea as it is mine. With any concerns the client had along the way, Garry and Clinton were able to come up with solutions that were both technically possible and budget-possible. One of the really good things the Lab did early on was take us all – client included – through a previous 3D animated job they’d done for Air Wick. So we could see the various stages in all their roughness and weirdness, get a feel for the process and understand how it all came together in the finished job.”
The Lab’s producer on Wattyl Solagard Linda Lum added, “We had a great working relationship with the client and agency. They trusted us and that made the process a much more efficient one.”
The team at the Lab created a 2D animatic and a 3D block building the TVC up in sections. According to Downs the spot was not without its challenges. He said, “It was tough to get all the story points nailed – the lighting, the painting of the house with time lapse, the Total Protection Technology graphic and the sun, wind and rain torture tests. There was also a pack shot at the end so we needed to time the spot well, pace it well and not make it too crammed.”
Downs and his team needed to hit the key points so that the spot could continue to be built. The constant evolving of the storyline added to the challenge. “As the story points kept evolving we had to make our process more fluid. This is also why it generally gets nailed the week before the ad is finalised and is exactly what happened in this case. This TVC was also one continuous animation so we couldn’t trim or edit which makes it harder again.”
The weather elements were all treated as distinct environments with a high level of detail applied to each one – a job The Lab’s Head of Design Garry Jacques had a big hand in. He added, “I presented references of the robotic arms, heaters and most of the elements in the first animatic which the client approved immediately. This left the 3D team to fully design them and create the magic.”
Interestingly the house in the TVC is a real Brisbane home and features on the side of a tin of Wattyl Solagard. “That said,” commented Downs, “we still had to remove the pool that usually sits outside it!.”
All of the CG weather elements were completely different. The Lab’s 3D team used Maya Fluid System for the jet blown wind with the house as a collision object whereas the rain was created with an ‘old school particle’ approach, many layers and a lot of clever augmentation in 2D.
Down’s explained further, “They are cool effects. The rain, wind and sun are totally different. For the sun we have cracked ground, a soaked house for the rain and a fluid system for the wind. Each effect was treated as a different shot. We also added a lot of detail like frost on the glass, and icicles on the roof. There was a lot of care and attention in this spot.”
Nunn added, “We made sure to constantly address client requirements without screwing up the idea. For example, the client (Julie Webster) wanted to highlight somehow the ‘Total Protection Technology’ part of the commercial – to somehow show that the technology was providing a protective shield or barrier for the house. Garry and Clinton suggested having the chemical formula circle the house and this solved the problem.”
As there was no live action in the spot the team decided to add some by placing some carefully crafted birds and butterflies in the last frame to accompany the pack shot. According to Wattyl Marketing Manager Julie Webster, the effects were so good that, “when the option comes up in the future to do CG or practical effects I will choose CG!”
Critical to the final look of the Wattyl Solagard TVC was the compositing. Senior Compositor on the spot Bertrand Polivka commented, “There was a good exchange of data with the 3D guys who also did a 3D comp to save time. We have an excellent pipeline and used Nuke for 95% of the spot, doing the final grade in Flame. As it was treated as one shot we had very big working files which had to be carefully managed.”
Unusually in this case Polivka’s ‘clients’ on the TVC were in effect the creative duo of Clinton Downs and Garry Jacques. Polivka commented, “Clinton and Garry are tough creatives and as clients would only settle for the best. There was a lot of 2D augmentation and enhancements in each of the 3D torture effects which had to be perfect. We added bigger effects like smoke around the house and water dripping onto it as well as more subtle ones like heat haze when the house is burning and an iced up lens effect when the house was cold.”
Graham Nunn concluded, “This project was a great collaboration from initial concept development through to final production. The guys at The Lab were always willing to work with the client and always kept their eye on getting a quality finished result and constantly came up with a way to satisfy everybody. No dummy spits, very professional and very good at what they do. There was a real sense that this was a labour of love as much as it was a commercial production.”
Wattyl Solagard Factory is now airing nationally.