Client brief

Specialmoves was commissioned by Saatchi & Saatchi to create a set of interactive banners for Visa's online business campaign. The core idea was that the user would be presented with a daily scene (businessman in his office, plumber working on a set of pipes) and dictate how the events pan out based on whether the character used Visa or cash for his transactions. As banner ads need to be short and simple, the message had to be extremely clear: business would improve when using Visa as it's a secure form of payment, whilst cash transactions are unprotected, leaving the business at risk.

This small 'story' would be shown in the format of a video which the user could manipulate by using a slider. In the case of the businessman, the state of his office would improve in the direction of Visa, whilst cash would leave him in a messy, unorganised room. As for the plumber, Visa would allow him to finish fixing his pipes with time to spare and cash would result in more leaks popping up.

Initial Planning and Storyboards

Filming for an interactive project is similar in many ways to a regular visual effects shoot in the sense that numerous factors have to be taken into account before anyone even touches a camera.

Based on the rough scamps from the client, we set out by drawing a comprehensive set of storyboards and director's treatment to cover any eventuality that might crop up. We pride ourselves on both the quality and clarity of our storyboards - they are an excellent way for our clients to understand the precise contents of a project as well as illustrating any potential obstacles to overcome. Over the course of a week, these storyboards were updated to reflect any points raised by discussions with both the client and the video production team.

One example was that in the initial scamps and storyboards, the plumber faced the pipes on his left. We felt it important to see more of the plumber's face in the scene (as that's where most of the emotion is conveyed to the viewer) plus the setup wasn't versatile enough to fit comfortably within the varied banner sizes. By moving the pipes to the foreground, the plumber could face the camera and still be a good size within the frame.

Storyboards developed from the original scamps helped plan the scene for the shoot.

3D Environment design

We have an powerful video compositing suite here at Specialmoves, so an obvious choice was to offer the option of compositing the businessman over a 3D-rendered office. We would then have the option to tweak whatever we liked in post-production, such as pictures falling off the wall as the office gradually becomes more dilapidated. Our 3D designers created initial renders for us use at the shoot as a basis for the actor's positioning in the frame.

Designing 3D backgrounds in advance placed us in great stead for the shoot.

Live on Set

Working together with Archer's Mark, all the footage was filmed in one day at Centre Stage Studios, Islington. In addition to the film crew, two members of Specialmoves were on set throughout. By taking one of our video production Mac Pros to the studio, we're able to provide a live,'rough' key using a direct BNC input from the camera. Live keying is a fantastic tool for a director to check exactly how the composition might be working and in this case, the clients also enjoyed the chance to take a peek at how things were coming along.

Shooting greenscreen footage opens up many doors when it comes to post production.

No Tape

When possible, we favour RED cameras for any film work. Together with the incredible 4K full-frame quality, we can operate within a completely digital workflow – everything is file-based and no tape is involved at any stage of the process. Once a shot is filmed, it's a simple case of copying the files over to the computer (we use a full RAID system for extra security) and all is good to go. Having footage at such a high resolution is also a benefit for the client should they choose to use it for any other purpose.

RED cameras are perfect for a high res, digital workflow.

The Cutting Room

Once the shoot is over and all the footage is sitting comfortably on our servers, the first step is to read through the director's notes and create first-draft edits of every scene. In the case of Visa, this resulted in 6 separate films: 3 for the office and 3 for the plumber (1 each for the cash side, the Visa side and an idle loop that runs before the user interacts with the banner). A great feature of using RED is that when shooting, the camera automatically creates 4 Quicktime proxy videos at varying resolutions. Final Cut Pro imports these proxies as it would any other Quicktime movie and is far more responsive than it would be if dealing with native R3D files (the RED proprietary format).

The Quicktime proxies keep the editing process short and simple,
offering the editor and client a high quality video with little impact on performance.

Bridging the Edit and Composite

After some minor tweaks and with the final edits approved, we were almost able to start work on the composite. Compositing with the full 4K footage is extremely processor intensive and not even fully supported by many editing suites, so the next logical step was to transcode the footage into something more useable. Apple ProRes files at 1280x720px provided us with a large area to work with and a good depth of colour for any adjustments. By exporting the edit data as an XML file from Final Cut and using some special magic, RED's own RedCine software was then able to find the exact sections of the R3D files that we wanted and transcode them to the ProRes format.

Creating a Scene

Shake is currently our compositing software of choice here at Specialmoves as it's fast, responsive and works seamlessly with the rest of our Final Cut Sudio workflow. In this case, the ProRes videos were keyed, layered on top of the animated 3D backgrounds and all colours adjusted before a final uncompressed export at each of the relevant banner sizes. We find it best to work on videos at a high resolution for as much of the workflow as possible, leaving any reduction in quality to the final stages of the process. In this case, the videos were then converted to FLVs for use in Flash.

Shake is a powerful, Hollywood-grade app in a small package.
Its depth allows us to tweak the composite to the whatever the client wishes.

Adding Interactivity and Extra Sparkle

These FLVs were then handed over to our Flash developers, who imported them onto the Flash timeline. This allowed us the luxury of frame-by-frame manipulation, a feature essential for this project as the user needed to have full control over the video clip. As the core of interactivity, the slider needed to feel satisfyingly smooth yet responsive and was tweaked until it felt just right for the purpose. Finally, to bring the plumber videos to life that little bit more, we added water particles and sparkles that animate even when the timeline is static.

Conclusion

In a short timeframe we created banners that are not only humorous, but are a pleasure to interact with. The outcome was so well received that it was given 3,420,000 impressions during the length of the Visa campaign.