Argos 'Aliens'

Ever wondered what aliens would make of human mayhem in the run up to Christmas? Well, Argos’ seasonal campaign, from CHI and Smuggler’s Guy Shelmerdine, may just have the answer. We see a cutesome family of aliens watch in confusion as humans dash around a shopping centre in a rush to buy presents. The smart aliens know that reserving online with Argos is the key to a stress-free Christmas.

Framestore’s brief was to make the puppet aliens feel even more real and lovable by adding eyes and CG animated mouths. Framestore’s VFX supervisor, Ben Cronin, won the job on the strength of a test he created for the aliens’ eyes. He used a 2.5D route for the eyes which enabled them to be projected onto shiny grey spheres from which reflections could be lifted.

Ben oversaw the three-day location shoot in Prague and the five-day studio shoot at Black Island to ensure the footage was captured in the most effective way. The aliens were shot using a combination of greenscreen backgrounds with green-suited puppeteers and rods to facilitate their removal. Because only two aliens could be shot at any one time, this approach also made it easier to composite plates.

Back in Blighty, Ben and his team only had two-and-a-half weeks to turn around the first spot in the campaign, with only one week for mouth animation because the audio had only just been finalised. But over the entire campaign, Framestore spent a month augmenting nearly 100 shots. The production required a team of six roto artists, five Flame artists and 12 CG guys to object track, animate mouths and project texture back onto moving models.