Zoidoid's Adfest Entry

This one gave me flashbacks to a messed up time in my life when I had watched Vanilla Sky (I know). Let's just say, I wasn't in 'normal' frame of mind. I watched that movie, didn't think much of it at the time. I slept that night, and it was just all over my brain, and I woke up thinking about it.

Well, for whatever reason, your spot took me back to that time in my life and for that reason, I say kudos. I also had a similar reaction. It felt well done when I watched it the first time, and that was about all I felt. But, then I kinda felt the need to go back to it, and have watched it several times since then.

This one was complete. It was creative, unique, audio narration was nicely done. Calm and subtle, yet descriptive and meaningful. And, the music fit nicely as well.

Kind of a complex premise, yet told simply and professionally.

In my list of 5 possibilities.

Thanks,
Jason
 
I thought this was an outstanding commercial. I really enjoyed the concept, and especially liked the ending sequence where he catches the balloon and smiles. Very cute. Good music and narration.
 
Really cool ad... VFX were well done, and it had a lot of style... the VO wasn't good for me however, I just didn't like the voice... but otherwise, fabulous! Definitely in my top 5.
 
Thanks very much for the comments and critiques! I'm very pleased that some of you liked it. That's quite encouraging. :)
 
I just watched this ad. Very nice. I´d like to know a little bit more how you achieved the kinetica teleportation device FX.
 
One of my favorites in the fest. Inventive. I liked the thing you did with the balloon. Very clever. VFX were good. A nice ad. The only thing that "bothered" me a little bit was that he made the "doorway" open up on/in front of a wall. My first reaction was that you were showing off a device that helped people walk through walls. I was confused for a bit until I realized he was up on a roof. I would have opened up the teleporter in open space.

Great job!
 
This is definitely one of my favorites. Congratulations on being one of the few people to make a commercial. I hope folks take into consideration the objective of the contest when voting. Call me old fashion, but I thought the point of a commercial was to inform a potential buyer the benefits of a product. I count a total four that do this and yours is one of them.
 
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macgregor said:
I just watched this ad. Very nice. I´d like to know a little bit more how you achieved the kinetica teleportation device FX.
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Thanks macgregor! This effect is really not much different than, say, replacing the image on a television. The only real difference here is that we need to make sure that we preserve the screen's glare and that the thumb ends up on top of the composited footage. So this took three steps:

- Motion-track the footage of the remote being used. The only problem here is that the device was all black and so had no points of high-contrast for motion tracking. So I added four small white stickers to the surface. I motion-tracked those points as indicators of perspective and position and used it as corner-pinning data.

- I quickly rotoscoped the thumb and used the data to create black-and-white matte.

- I drew up the replacement screen graphics in After Effects as well. Imported it into the footage, and corner-pinned it to the plane defined by the four white points (which were edited out). Then, I applied the black-and-white thumb-matte as a Luma Key that told the overlay where NOT to draw. This made it seem as though the thumb were on top. Finally, to preserve the glare of the screen, I just chose "screen" as the blending option for the layer. This basically preserved the brightness of the glare.

I was looking around for a quicker way to do this and apparently there is one. Imagineer Monet looks remarkable:

http://www.imagineersystems.com/products/monet/

They have videos that demonstrate how this effect is achieved.
 
Thanks again, everyone, for the feedback and comments!

cinealma said:
One of my favorites in the fest. Inventive. I liked the thing you did with the balloon. Very clever. VFX were good. A nice ad. The only thing that "bothered" me a little bit was that he made the "doorway" open up on/in front of a wall. My first reaction was that you were showing off a device that helped people walk through walls. I was confused for a bit until I realized he was up on a roof. I would have opened up the teleporter in open space.

Great job!
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That's interesting! A friend of mine suggested the same thing. You have a good point, here. In my mind, the portals that the system generated had to be projected onto a surface. But, of course, none of that is ever explained or described. So I got used to thinking of it in this way and, stupidly, didn't consider the confusion that might cause. Thanks very much for the comments! So glad you liked it.

CarlSpackler said:
This is definitely one of my favorites. Congratulations on being one of the few people to make a commercial. I hope folks take into consideration the objective of the contest when voting. Call me old fashion, but I thought the point of a commercial was to inform a potential buyer the benefits of a product. I count a total four that do this and yours is one of them.
Click to expand...

Thanks! This was actually tricky for me, because I'm much more likely to think up interesting situations and circumstances and THEN adapt it to the task at hand. So I tried to make up for it by making sure that the voice-over clearly states the advantage of the product. Hopefully, people watch this and think "That gives me an idea of another cool thing you could do with this device..."
 
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Great entry. I think it's one of the best I've seen of the bunch. Maybe it was answered elsewhere in the thread, but for the last shot of the balloon being caught, did you just pull it down out of frame and then play that footage backwards?

Also, just because I'm a curious sort, how were you allowed to post BTS footage and stills of your product before the entry came out? Everybody else tended to post rather cryptic images of what their product might be, but you clearly show the device on the main update thread.
 
I thought you did a good job on this. Definitely one of the better ones. And I agree that the use of the balloon sold it.
 
Hey Zoidoid. This was a really great spot. I've always been facinated with the teleportation concept. Pro caliber shots with VFX that really sold the concept. The balloon gag really tied the shots together too. Made total sense to me.

Can't say I have any serious crits other than the roto of the thumb over the pad. I did some roto on ours as well and it's not easy. Very minor, but I just think the seperation is a bit sharp.

Excellent work Zoidoid. You got one of my votes. Thanks for sharing.
 
Great job on this. In the beginning, I was thinking... OK, what the hell's with the balloon?? Which is a GOOD thing because the viewer will pay attention to the rest of the ad to figure out what's going on. And the shot of the guy grinning at the end was a great touch. :)
 
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