Homebase 'Pier'

Leo Burnett's new 24-part TV campaign for Homebase sees a seaside pier being turned into a beautiful home. Directed by Dab Hand Media's Liz Murphy, Framestore was on-hand to bring the campaign to life through extensive visual effects.

The production was not only challenging due to its vast scale, it was also beset by snow, floods and a cyclone thanks to shooting in Brisbane during some of Australia's worst weather in history. Framestore's Tim Osborne braved the elements to supervise the shoot and lead the Flame work back in London.

In response to the director's brief of keeping as many of the effects in-camera, several rigs were devised and built to animate sequences like the growing plants and unfolding wall paper. However, some effects could not be staged on location. For these, two bluescreen studios were set up to match the pier's camera angles and lighting conditions. The resulting plates were then hand-animated to create stop motion sequences. Some stop-frame sections were created in Flame to blend perfectly with existing scenes, for example – tile animation

Extensive rig removal was carried out in Flame as well as combining multiple location and studio elements for each scene. However, the condensed transition from morning to night posed the biggest challenge. Tim Osborne said: "One of the biggest challenges was a day for night scene. The original intention was for the pier to be seen during the day, but whilst editing, there was a request for the pier to become a night-time shot. So new water, lights and reflections were added in Flame." Framestore colourist, Steffan Perry, also aided the time-lapse effect through his grade which tweaked the look of every shot to give the feeling of the time passing from morning through to evening.