That Close
Facebook’s Watch Together feature, which allows users to view content from creators simultaneously within a shared screen, brings friends and family together like they’re “That Close.” To celebrate these shared experiences, Framestore worked alongside Facebook Creative X to explore the concept with a fun metaphorical twist, visually pulling one friend towards another in a series of on-platform films.
Serial Pictures director Dan Askill, known best for creating striking visuals in a host of music videos including Sia’s ‘Chandelier’ and Lady Gaga’s ‘Stupid Love,’ brought his unique aesthetic to each floating moment of connection.
“The entire project was like Inception on a two-day shoot,” said Framestore Creative Director and VFX Supervisor, Ben West. “Each location was built on a gimbal rig to tip the entire set, which provided a very surreal, yet realistic, quality to the pull effect.”
Assisted by stunt support, the wire-rigged cast were able to fall out of the scene and towards their friends through a connecting void. The Framestore team extended each environment with CG set builds and FX for tumbling props. Each scene required a curated approach to compositing, with passes retimed and layered in order to support the sequence moving from one location to another. The films were then finished in Flame, while various compositing elements were finalized in Nuke.
Finally, an extended film version adds to the overall campaign concept by encouraging the audience to rotate their phones from portrait to landscape orientation to mirror the tumbling action in the scene.
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