Posted on Sep 29, 2016 | 0 comments

Sony Bravia 4K HDR TV Commercial – behind the scenes

Day four on set

There were not so many things on paper for the day, but it still took a while to shoot everything. They’ve split again the team into 3 camera crews, two of which were supposed to film separately some motion VFX – glitter in the air, isolated on black or white, small explosions, glitter spinning inside the balloons so they could add it in the final TVC.

In charge for all VFX was Johannes Mueller who was supervising every camera setups, every effect, taking notes on exposure settings, FPS, angles etc. so his studio could match and blend every VFX needed for this commercial.

: Shooting burst of glitter using compressed air

: Different takes, angles, glitter size and colour

: They’ve also setup some pyrotechnical charges to blow away glitter in mid air

: Like this

: Or like this

The most creative part was to shoot the internal of a balloon like an X-Ray, because somewhere in the final TVC, before balloons start to explode and reveal coloured glitter, you could see some movement inside. This was achieved by blowing high pressure air inside a balloon with glitter inside. It was lit from behind and the camera could see tiny particles rotating inside

Then something stroke me like a hammer. I’ve passed by these pillars 3 days in a row and I couldn’t tell they were fake, put there from the beginning and now removed to make more room for another scene of full interior room covered in glitter.

: Fake pillars being removed from the set

: And a second one

In the meantime outside they were preparing another exploding shoot, this time lots of balloons where pushing from inside, and a window was going to break due to this pressure. Glitter everywhere! 🙂

: Again, multiple cameras were setup, for different angles of the exploding window

: One was set on a rail just under the exploding window, and it was pulled by a wire away from the glass

: This is how it looked from the other side, again big nets setup to catch the Bio-glitter for a minimum water contamination

: A dolly-man was passing just under the exploding window. He needed proper protection, because the glass was real

: Glitter everywhere!

When I got back inside, between reshoots of the breaking window scene, the “landscape” was changed once again in the fake pillars room

: Someone was again loose on glitter

: They’ve managed to cover this huge room in no time

: Even the mirrors and walls got splashes of glitter. To be able to stick, they’ve just sprayed water

: An amazing view of an even more amazing room

: And here, the guilty guy, sentenced to death by air-gun

The last scene before the shooting end was a slow-motion recording of a wobbling ballon, filled with glitter and also being shot with the guns. The SFX guys build a ring and used it like a slingshot to project balloons in front of the camera. Genius at play!