Orchestrating the beating is director Kinka Usher, DP Max Malkin with Method Studios' lead effects artist Alex Frisch and producer Sue Troyan. Two weeks were spent filming background plates for "Spaceship" which premiered during the Survivor premier. The crew shot on location in Sequim, WA, Utah's Monument Valley and a remote area outside of Anchorage, Alaska.

The 60-second spot opens at a Washington campsite with an alien abduction. To achieve the desired effect, the Dew dudes were dropped from a descender rig and shot separately against blue screen while hanging from a wire. "We created this abduction completely in inferno*," comments Frisch on the swirling effect. "We wanted to do something that was still organic which is why we used some real elements."

The spaceship was created in CG and demanded an intense pre-visualization process using 3D shots and background plates to recreate the motion and angles of the ship as depicted in the storyboards.

Resembling a skateboard, the ship executes extreme tricks complete with lip grinds and 180s. "We lengthened it out, trimmed the tips on it a little bit and that made it more reactive," says Usher of the design.

"We had a tremendous amount of struggle trying to make sure it didn't look light as a feather," continues Usher. "We had to give weight and mass to the ship, which meant the shots had to be there longer otherwise it would look very light."

To establish speed, Frisch rendered a single background plate combining aerial shots of the Washington forest and Monument Valley. The footage was captured from a helicopter with a spacecam system.

"We tried to move the helicopter at the same speed," says Frisch, in an effort to reconcile the immense weight of the spacecraft with the speed and agility needed to execute each stunt. "Every time we attempted to move the spaceship too quickly it looked wrong because it's supposed to be 150 feet [long] and weigh a lot. We had to figure out how to establish scale."

Bruce and Usher established scale by incorporating a scene with cowboys and a pick-up truck. The cowboys are dwarfed by the alien craft as it rises up behind them and performs a lip grind.

Live explosions were shot on location to ensure an accurate portrayal of sand and rock elements from the structure. 3D company Manex created additional rock pieces seen hitting the ground and bouncing off the truck. "The idea was to blend all the elements and make it believable to the scene," says Frisch. "We also added a camera shake."

The TV viewer then boards the ship and is seated at the console for an alien's eye view of Monument Valley. The footage is shot low to the ground with the helicopter moving at top speed. The "alien vision" is in fact the chopper charging towards a cliff and pulling up at the last second.

After heading up into the clouds and hovering over Seattle, the spaceship coasts down an Alaskan mountainside, its movements produced by an actual snowboarder removed from the shot in post. To simulate the spacecraft plummeting down the mountainside, a team of explosives experts triggered a series of avalanches. Seconds later, the spacecraft demolishes an outhouse occupied by a local, who attributes the incident to a lunchtime bowl of chili.

The final sequence involves another series of explosions rigged by the same team of experts. Here the purpose is to generate the wake of the ship as it skims across the tops of glaciers. "We had two helicopters in Alaska," explains Usher. "One of the choppers carried the dynamite; they were trained explosives experts."

"We'd pick a slope that we wanted to blow and they would set down, take the door off [the helicopter], load up the charges, and throw them out while we hovered with the camera. They were the effects helicopter and we acted as a camera dolly in a separate helicopter."

Having had enough of the over-caffeinated youths, the aliens expel the dudes from the mother ship and abort mission. The camera pulls back to reveal real-life crop circles reading, "Do the Dew."

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