Johnnie Walker 'Fish'

BODY AND SHOAL
Every so often a commercial comes along that's a little bit special. Sometimes it's humour that makes it memorable; sometimes it's a jingle or slogan that lodges in the public consciousness; and once in a while it's something that's rather less easy to define...

Call it beauty, call it boldness, call it wonder; a few commercials present you with a set of images so striking that you watch them again and again just for the sheer pleasure of what you're seeing. In the past, Framestore has helped create some of these memorable spots - Guinness Surfer and Levi's Odyssey, for instance. Now Fish, a new spot for Johnnie Walker whisky, is the first contender for 'spot-you-most-hope-to-see-again' in 2003.

Fish starts with the camera moving over the surface of a blue-green ocean. It submerges and we catch our first glimpses of what appear to be multitudes of shoaling fish. The images are familiar from nature documentaries - the 'fish' darting in different directions, the many acting as one, the shoal seeming almost an entity in itself. As the camera closes in on the shoal, we realise that the creatures we are seeing are not fish but people - arms by their sides, legs together - driving themselves through the water with great speed and grace.

The pace picks up as we see the people near the surface, and then they start to leap out of the water. From above we see not one or two, but many, many men and women shooting out of the water like dolphins playfully racing each other. It is exhilarating and impossible. We finally return under the water, now in the shallows. One of the men touches his foot down onto the white sand. He stands up. He walks forward onto the beach of a tree-lined bay, others emerging to follow him. As he moves purposefully inland, we fade to black and the slogan 'Keep Walking'. This brief description of the action of the spot barely does justice to the beauty and power of the images - you really do have to see it to get it.

Fish was directed by Daniel Kleinman and produced by Spectre for BBH. The script arrived at Framestore in August 2002. Several weeks of planning followed, with Framestore Inferno artists on board as Co-Supervisors. Australia was finally selected as the location for the shoot - the rig designers down-under had come up with some really elegant and practical solutions to the problems posed by the 'racing dolphin' shots.

As preparations for the shoot continued, animatics prepared by Kleinman gave the team an idea of what was going to be needed. It quickly became obvious that there were three levels of activity needed: the background shoaling, where the fish form a virtually undifferentiated mass of hundreds of individuals; the mid-range shots, where there are large numbers of people - around 100 - but they can be seen in some detail; and the front shots - close-ups of one or two people. Each of these levels demanded a different approach from the 3D team as they devised the tools that would enable them to create the CG elements of the shoals.

The 3D team worked in Maya, using the Mel scripting language, to generate the CG people. They found that they could describe the shape of the shoal using a few key people and then interpolating from that. Intelligent interpolation was a guiding principal throughout the CG process, used when creating the individual movements of the people, and when creating their physiques. For the physiques two basic female and two male body shapes were created. Once variables such as hair length were included, a huge variety of different people could be generated from the same basic materials.

The CG people needed to have enough variety so that they didn't look overly synchronised, like marching troops, so a character sheet was devised which gave different swimmers different swimming styles. There were 'travellers', 'powerkicks', 'generics', 'gliders' and 'coastdwellers'.

The CG process whereby the shots could proceed from animatic to finished shot operated via several stages: i) a shot plate was created, often tweaked for lighting effects by the Inferno operator, ii) rough paths were sketched over a still of the shot plate within Photoshop, giving an indication to the animators for the swim-paths. iii) the animators 'blocked' out the scene with a small number of low-resolution people. iv) with a small amount of tweaking, the 'random people generator' would then create hundreds of the high-resolution, fully defined people. v) the shot would then need to be rendered.

Smaller models of the swim cycles were developed for the the early shots featuring the huge shoals. The power of 'particle' technology in Maya, meant that a vast number of people - at times reaching 8000 - could be created.

It was now mid-October and, as the 3D development continued, the shoot commenced off the coast of South Australia. The team had decided that any medium or close up shots of the swimmers should, if possible, be live action. Various methods were deployed to provide an extra dimension of speed and power to the swimmers movements. A winch was used to drag them past camera in one shot; and specially made perspex flippers helped propel them while being easy to remove in post. In certain shots a large number of different takes were used to construct a scene; with the swimmers being directed into different positions to allow the Inferno artists to multiply the 10 swimmers into many more. Many of the figures would then be vari-sped or moved in the Inferno to give the impression of fish-like rapidity and ease through the water. CG characters were then added to compliment the live action composites - and were often used far closer than originally planned due the quality of animation and lighting. Particles and sunlight effects then helped give the shots a dramatic feel.

Another challenging section was the 'dolphin leap' shots. The Framestore team were very impressed by how game the swimmers were. A team of 10 local Australian stunt performers created the leaps, and they were all really up for it. Since being 'up for it' entailed being strapped in to a rig that then hauled them out of the water at high speed, it was a pleasant surprise to see the swimmers eagerly queuing up so as not to miss their turn.

With all the ingredients prepared, the final mix could begin. In terms of the overall impact of Framestore's work on Fish, if one single facet deserves pinpointing it would surely be the masterly synthesis of CG and practical elements produced by Framestore's Inferno artists. Their shots expertly use the elements created for them by the CG team, while simultaneously pulling the eye's focus and attention toward the human beings filmed in Australia. The overall result is an astonishing and seamless sequence of shots that provides the most fun you are likely to have seen during a commercial break for a very long time.