BBH copywriter Antony Goldstein and art director Gavin Lester (who, upon completion of the spot headed to New York to assist in preliminary creative for BBH's newly won US Levi's account), creative director Stephan Butler and agency producer Andy Gulliman followed up last year's multi award-winning "Twist" (directed by Frank Budgen) with a spot drawing attention to the contour-hugging freedom afforded by the high-tech dungarees.

The spot, "Odyssey," has French actors Nicolas Duvauchelle and Antoinette Sugier racing from room to room, bursting through walls like sprinters over hurdles, and eventually, after a suggestive shared glance, to the outside world. There, they run straight up a pair of sky-scraping trees and leap, shorn of earthly ties, into the heavens. The explosive yet elegant action of the 60-second spot is tempered by Handel's "Sarabande," orchestrated by John Altman. (To view "Odyssey" visit www.boardsmag.com/ screeningroom.)

"We didn't think about what action was physically feasible. We sought an expression of freedom of movement with no physical barriers," says Goldstein, noting that films such as The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had established that the required technology was available.

"We were trying to create something physical and thought-provoking with the viewer. The music helps make this journey mental as well as physical."

The obviously technical production required Framestore-CFC visual effects supervisor Mark Nelmes and co-head of 3D commercials Andrew Daffy to travel with the production to Budapest for the shoot via Pioneer Productions. Prior to shooting, a low-tech miniature set was assembled to test motion control moves, and to begin the process of creating the dust and debris generated by exploding walls. The actors were first filmed and then their actions were rotoscoped in 3D; virtual models of both were created and tested in a 3D set to further plan the shoot. The length of the strides of the actors ultimately affected the size of the set in that room sizes were optimized to highlight their dynamics.

"The sets were built with holes double normal doorway size. On the ground there were footpads to trigger the air jets placed above the gap that bombarded them from above and below with chalk painted as rubble and various fragments that looked like wall," says Nelmes. "This got the interaction from them. With the first wall, he goes in clean and comes out dirty; to put dirt on them in CG, with hair and all, would have been difficult."

The second follows the male lead's sprint through three walls, and was captured in one camera move, thus the necessity for extensive pre-visualization. As for the tree-sprinting scene, the actors were shot on blue screen with foliage arranged around them, which enhanced their performances by forcing them to avoid tangible physical obstacles. DP Dan Landin captured the footage predominantly on 35mm with some 16mm handheld segments.

Following the shoot, the ever-prolific Sam Sneade set to work editing "Odyssey." Throughout the course of the shoot and edit, animation supervisors Jake Mengers and Markus Manninen designed the forest and the wall explosions respectively.

"The first thing we did was track all of the scenes to get 3D versions. We digitally rotoscoped characters that we placed over the real characters running through walls, so we could delete plates and have the character in a 3D environment," says Daffy.

The preliminary wall explosion work was first generated frame by frame in Maya; however, Glazer's exacting attention to realism demanded further effort. The explosions had to seem real, the visuals poetic and the jeans themselves had to be visibly central to the narrative.

"The first fist coming through the wall needed to be framed with bits of boulder complementing. Most debris pieces throughout the wall sequence were animated by hand. The slow motion scene of the girl's first appearance was the most complex," says Daffy.

"We created a lot of dust technology. Live action dust made up 60 per cent while the other 40 per cent was digital. Maya has particle generation but it needs a lot of close attention to make it realistic."

In order to create the explosions, the animation team referenced demolition footage and the Blade Runner scene where Rutger Hauer rams his head through a wall, as well as observations on disintegration made from destroying plasterboard.

"As for the forest, we tracked every single shot and had a wire frame rotoscope of the actors in each shot against low resolution gray scale shots of the trees. There was so much spatial stuff going on in that shot that we had no comprehension of while shooting. So, we used the gray trees as a language for Jonathan to judge," says Daffy.

Generating random trees and creating a seemingly natural sway of trunks, branches and foliage required ample rendering power. Framestore's permanent render farm was bolstered by the NT-networked computers of the 12-strong animation team. However, compositing was required before the final visuals could be nailed down. Ultimately, Framestore-CFC spent nearly five months on the spot.

The full Framestore-CFC team on the spot included CGI artists Jamie Isles, Antony Field, Robert Krupa, Chris Syborn, Howard Sly and Kate Hood, Inferno artists Murray Butler and Stephane Allender, matte artists Darran Nicholson and Stephanie Mills, paint artists Steve Tizzard and Ian Fellows, Spirit operator Dave Ludlam, post producers Helen MacKenzie and Rachael Penfold and post coordinators Verity Grantham and Rebecca Barbour.

Webfiles:
BBH> http://www.bartleboglehegarty.com
Framestore-CFC> http://www.framestore-cfc.com
Levi's> http://www.levi.com