Posted on Sep 29, 2016 | 0 comments

Sony Bravia 4K HDR TV Commercial – behind the scenes

Day two on set

So the balloons, after climbing the stairs, becomes so crowded that space is no longer enough for them and a pillar cracks, filmed in slow motion. Of course they wanted it to be as real as possible and the set-up was extremely complex. People pushing balloons all over the place, one main balloon compressing itself into the pillar, and someone else forcing the polystyrene pillar to crack. It looked simple but I think it was the scene the most difficult to shoot. (I’m writing this before seeing the final TVC and I’m not even sure if this scene made it to the final clip).

: The general setup of the scene

: Look at these two pillars. Closer to the right of the frame is the original one, and further away, pressed by the balloon is the “fake” one

: The pressure was too much on the pillar and they needed to hold it from above, fixing it to the main pillars

: People caught in the middle of the sea of balloons, waiting for the re-setup of the scene

: This guy was conceived from the camera and he was in charge of pushing hard on the pillar to break it

: First shy push is barely visible on camera

: The “painter” comes back to fix the small crack so they can use the same pillar for a new shoot

: First real crack, after many tries

: If I remember correctly, this was the final crack that everyone agreed is good enough, but not perfect

: They were the ones pushing the balloons from below, upwards for more dinamics

: Agency and client watching the shot footage in slow motion and deciding to move forward to the next scenes

While doing the set-up after every take of the previous scene, crew B shot another scene, the one in the biggest room (the one with the mushroom window that can be seen from outside) with the balloons hitting the chandelier.

: Long exposure of people pushing up the balloons to the big chandelier

: The main camera was on a dolly-pushed cart facing upwards. I’ve put my camera on the cart too, for a similar frame

: It is impossible to show through an image the majesty and vastness of this huge room. Imagine just that the biggest balloons in this frame are 2m wide

Soon after this scene, the invasion continued into this big room, near the mushroom window. The highest number of balloons that I’ve ever seen in one place were connected one to each-other and people were pushing and pulling them across the room.

: Invasion step 1

: Invasion step 2

: Invasion step 3

: Invasion step 4

: Some more fishing

: Curiosity didn’t kill the cat 🙂

And now we have arrived at the most colourful part of the entire day. We’ve moved outside for the big explosion. The plot was that balloons got so crowded and the Casino was filled completely, finally to explode into a burst of coloured dust and glitter. Something like this 🙂

They only had two takes on this. Two, and that was it! Everything needed to be perfect. It took almost 2 hours to redo the setup after the first take. SFX team had plenty of canons to fill, plenty of exploding fuses to set-up and behind the Casino some coloured smoke grenades.

Interesting fact No. 6

They’ve used approx 500 kg of coloured powder and some 1000 kilos of glitter in different sizes and colours.

Everyone had to be in his position, walking a specific path, reacting at the bang and looking up, towards the exploding Casino. To make sure everything will be perfect related to casting, they’ve did plenty of dry shots with no explosions. The guy responsible of getting the pavement wet had a lot of work to do.

All 5 cameras were setup in different angles and different capture speed, to get also some slow-motion. Something like this 🙂 (yes, I’ve used again my iPhone, while my Sony A7s was doing the timelapse you’ll see below). Also a drone has captured the action from the air.

After the explosion the camera moves to the main talent, the girl with the dog. There are plenty of frames with her: she is covered in glitter, looks at her hand (another scene shot inside) and then the dog that was covered in glitter too will shake its fur.