RUSHES COMMERCIAL AS SMOOTH AS SILK

RUSHES, one of Europe’s leading special effects and post-production houses, have completed a new commercial for the new Dove Body Silk cream, starring British supermodel, Lisa Snowden.
Rushes Flame Artist, Ludo Fealy, said: “Working on Dove Body Silk became more of a challenge due to unforeseen problems with the silk. When the silk was cut on set the edges became frayed almost instantly and as there was no way of curing the problem on set, it was left to post to get rid of the frayed edges. This was not too much of a problem on the static shots, but there was one moving shot where the camera was tracking around Lisa’s body as the silk was being pulled down over her.
“As Lisa was not moving very much I was able to offset the timing of the silk by a couple of frames, so that by matting off the silk pass, I could start it later in the shot. This gave me a virtual clean pass underneath to allow me to create a clean edge."
Because the director Sue Worthy wanted to use large pieces of silk to achieve a graceful billowing effect, she had to stitch smaller pieces together to obtain a big enough piece. This created seams, which could have been difficult to get rid of, but the process turned out to be quite simple, when Fealy used Blur in the paint module.
“The rest of the time was spent enhancing highlights of the body through the silk and trying to ‘melt’ the silk into the body, to give the feeling that the silk was part of the body,” he added.
The new Dove Body Silk cream provides silky smooth skin all over and this message is re-inforced by images of Snowden massaging it into her skin. The viewer is provided with a visual metaphor of this as the silk literally pours over Snowdens body like cream. (CD)