Levi's 'Odyssey'

FRAMESTORE TEARS INTO 2002

Odyssey - which spotlights Levi's Engineered Jeans - is one of the most spectacular showcases yet devised by the company's longtime agency BBH. The agency went to acclaimed director Jonathan Glazer to develop and realize the project, and to Framestore to provide the visual effects expertise necessary to support their ambitious vision.

The 60 second spot opens as a young man opens the door of a dingy, anonymous apartment. He turns and walks back from the opened door, a determined glint in his eye. With a rush he hurls himself through the door towards the other side of the adjacent room and, unstoppably, right through its brick wall. Bricks and mortar explode and shatter around him as he continues to run. Rather than being slowed down by the series of walls he encounters, he actually seems to be accelerating.

We see that he has been joined in this fantastical bid for freedom by a young woman. She is running parallel with him, similarly crashing through the walls. The pair reach a stairwell where they pause, acknowledging each other for the first time.
A look of understanding passes between them. We now see the outside of the building as the pair crash through the final wall. We cut to some woodland, through which the young couple continue to pelt. It takes a second to realize that they are not rushing past trees, but rather up them, defying the laws of gravity and reason. Finally, reaching the tops of their trees, our bedenimmed Romeo & Juliet do not pause, flinging themselves upwards, still running, into a spectacularly beautiful night sky.

MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE BEAUTIFUL
Jonathan Glazer needs little introduction these days. His commercials have won innumerable awards, and his relationship with Framestore has been long and fruitful. CFC helped him to create the Guinness Surfer and Dreamer spots, U.N.K.L.E.'s Rabbit in Your Headlights video, as well as many other commercial and film collaborations.

So it was with some confidence that Glazer came to Visual Effects Supervisor Mark Nelmes and outlined his ideas. As ever with Glazer's work the digital effects, whilst absolutely cutting edge, exist to serve the story, not the other way around. "Given that CG is progressing as fast as it is, what allows a piece of work to leapfrog over the competition is, I believe, strong narrative. If you're showing something that's surreal - almost mythological - then the performances of the actors have to be authentic and the CG work has to be totally believable," says Glazer. "However good the effects are, they will look like a crutch if the storytelling isn't there - and what we have here is a 60 second love story. But I would not have taken the job on if I didn't have complete confidence in the CG and compositing work that Framestore could deliver."

FROM STARTING GATE...
The process involved in creating a piece like Odyssey is necessarily a collaborative one. As Jonathan Glazer puts it, "It doesn't start with me and end with them - we're all in it together from start to finish. Mark (Nelmes), Andrew (Daffy - CG Supervisor) and Stephane (Allender - Inferno) were all at the shoot - they were in it from the get go." Shooting conditions were not luxurious. "We shot it at a conference centre in Budapest - it was like a 300m long B&Q shed," recalls Nelmes. The shoot took place in June 2001, although Framestore had started the project's research and development work some time before that.

Markus Manninen and Andrew Daffy, joint Heads of the 3D Commercials department, eagerly picked up the gauntlet. Manninen concentrated on the walls sequence and its development challenges, whilst Daffy supervised the design issues, with Lead Artist Jake Mengers particularly addressing the forest sequence.

Andrew Daffy did the pre-vis (pre-visualisation) - a computer generated dry run of the shots. It was the first time Glazer had used this increasingly popular technique of shoot 'rehearsal'. "But any nerves I had evaporated in the face of the effects team's brilliance and enthusiasm," he says, "I relaxed and became very involved with the pre-vis. I don't think we could have done the spot without it." Explains Andrew Daffy, "Before pre-vis was introduced we found that we were often fixing plates that directors had shot, but now we can help ensure the final thing works before we even turn over."

...TO FINISHING POST...
The distinctive look of the explosive and tree elements was not finally arrived at until October. "There was a lot of back and forth between Jon (Glazer) and us during that time," says Mark Nelmes, "Because the actors themselves modify any plans you may have made about the look of the forest and the feel of the explosions. Their expressions, their body language as they crash through a wall or charge through branches - these things dictate what sort of wall or branch you create."

"We tried to break things down into manageable pieces and then assemble them at the end," says Markus Manninen of the wall sequence and its attendant CG explosions. "We built a miniature set with holes in the wall and shot it on film. We tried to work out how we were going to be able to use our procedural tools to drive the process. It had to be fast, too, because the schedule dictated creating a lot of shots in a short period of time." Glazer's perfectionism and a need for greater control over the explosions, however, meant that this procedural approach would only get the team some of the way towards the desired look, and it was eventually complemented by key framing and the insertion of 'hero' elements into the images.

The forestry was likewise painstakingly constructed by Jake Mengers and his team. Based on careful study of pines and redwoods, the forest consists of entirely original CG trees. Flecked with CG moss, they are designed to best show off our running couple. Mengers says that Jonathan Glazer's minute attention to detail was a little daunting at first, but that the relationship subsequently flourished under Nelmes's steady supervision.

...AND BEYOND
The sky at the end of the spot, into which our pair hurl themselves, was also the result of weeks of computer artistry. Daffy tracked the shot of the two actors in 3D and gave the material to Inferno Operator Murray Butler. Butler had already been involved with the wall sequences, and here he brought together a huge number of cloud textures, photographs, smoke, and other elements to craft what Glazer refers to, somewhat proprietorially, as "my perfect sky".

Odyssey, with its powerful imagery of running and jumping to freedom, represents a new level of excellence in television commercial effects work. As it has done so frequently in the past, Framestore has raised the bar on the competition.