Sky WiFi

Jude Law plays the lead role in the Sky Wifi advertising campaign for Sky Italia’s fiber service. In the commercial, the two-time Academy Award® nominee wanders through stunning locations in Venice, Milan and Genoa, recalling a conversation with a woman about the importance of invisible connections, which, just like emotions, play an essential role in our lives and create powerful and spectacular bonds. Simple, powerful and spectacular is the campaign’s claim that summarizes Sky Wifi’s uniqueness and excellence.

Directed by Barry Skolnick, Sky Italia’s team undertook two shoots; one in Italy with a stand in for Jude Law and one in London, produced by Framestore Pictures, with Jude Law. Led by VFX Supervisor Chris Redding, the team composited the location shoot’s plates with the studio performance from the academy-nominated star.

Redding had to ensure consistency across the two shoots. From the UK, he remotely oversaw the shoot in Italy using video conferencing and a live feed from the camera. He could see what was being captured in real time, advising on shots and setups that would work best in post-production and planning for the second upcoming studio shoot. 

This socially-distant studio shoot in London then used carefully built proxy sets which the team used to plan and block out Law’s movements. The lighting set-up was meticulously matched to the lighting to the Italian plates, working closely with Director of Photography Ivan Bird, and using camera information provided by the local VFX team in Italy.

‘As a VFX studio, we’ve often worked on projects where we’ve needed to insert a performer into plates shot elsewhere,’ commented Chris Redding. ‘We’ve fine-tuned our process to make the compositing as realistic as possible, ensuring we match the direction, colour and softness of the light exactly in every scene which was incredibly important in this project.’

The solutions we provided meant all of the time and resources spent on the project's pre-production, didn’t go to waste. 

Helen Hughes, Framestore’s Head of Advertising said; ‘We’ve been working on multiple solutions to the challenges presented by COVID. These include taking on CG-heavy projects, creating video conference commercials to using remote and green screen shoots to their fullest-potential. We’re providing services that are more valuable than ever and means that our clients don’t have to compromise on their creative vision.’