Mill place digital nature in the mix for O2 'Panoramic' campaign

Following on from Ivan Bird’s earlier brand campaign for O2, 'Panoramic' continues to mix all things digital with nature.
Demonstrating the new X-Range’s multiple capabilities – internet, games, video, music player and digital camera – elements from various landscapes, from urban office to scenic lighthouse, are given the O2 treatment. This beautifully crafted spot opens with a homage to Tetris-style video games with partial office blocks that float down from above to neatly slot into place on existing buildings. The ad ends with a shot that looks like a laptop - a top shot of a tall building looking down onto a screen-like swimming pool. These visual metaphors are knitted together with O2’s instantly-recognisable Fat Boy Slim track which supplies the base for some impressive time-synched light animation.
Russell Tickner supervised the shoot in Berlin, where he captured detailed photographs of many of the city’s new buildings, along with some high dynamic range environment photos which he later used for seamless rendering. On his return to The Mill, Russell then modelled and textured these buildings in sections to create the reflective and photoreal weighty building blocks that animate into the shots at the beginning of the commercial. The cg team also created the O2 brand’s signatory bubbles for many scenes.
Ant Walsham spent a month in Flame bringing each shot to perfection. Much of his task involved invisibly compositing all 3D elements into the live action. But Ant was also charged with augmenting some live action elements, like buildings, into precise shapes. One of the most demanding shots was the lighthouse scene. This was developed from several different passes and elements - the live action sea was mixed with a rough sea, created in 3D, to create a more dynamic effect and the sky was made more dramatic using sky replacement. The lighthouse was taken from an entirely different location with its flashing lights added in post by Ant who ensured they affected the lashing rain accordingly.
Ant developed an ingenious method for establishing the pattern for soundtrack-synched light elements, like the hand-painted office window lights. Running Fat Boy Slim’s soundtrack through an audio programme to create a graphic equalizer sequence, he then filmed this, close-up to the monitor, transferred it into his Flame suite, and used this sequencer 'timeline' as the basis for the animation, so that window lights, for example, peaked and troughed in line with the graphic equalizer.
(SP)