Director: Pleix, BlinkInk
DP: Garry Waller
The brief: An Infiniti courses through a flat gray environment, creating vivid waves of multi-colored paint in its wake.
The solution: Legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond once told Boards that "a painter was just a cinematographer without a camera." Pleix's recent Infiniti "G-Spot" clip for TBWA\Chiat\Day, LA through BlinkInk mixes the mediums to tantalizing effect. Directors Pleix brought in-demand cinematographer Garry Waller (Ford "Cornfield") on board for the challenging paint wave portion of the shoot.
Here's Waller on the process:
"For the high-speed photography portion of the shoot we used the Phantom V9 and V7 cameras. We used the Phantom V7 entirely for the paint portion of the shoot and we had the V9 at hand for back up in case we trashed the V7. The Infiniti vehicles were shot on 35mm film with Arri 435 film cameras.

"The availability, size and weight of the Phantom cameras were the major contributing factors to using them. Time slice was never considered, due to the rigging and motion requirements of both the camera itself and the paint, as well as desire for natural camera movement motion blur.

"A pre-production phase of two months was necessary for the building and testing of the actual rigs required to create the wave effects and the movement of the camera during the wave event. These events had a duration of anywhere from one to five seconds. To make our adventure even more interesting, Pleix wasn't going to sit still for a static locked-off camera; they were interested in the camera traveling along with the event, sometimes trailing it and sometimes leading it and even circling it. The 'shark fins', 'plows' and mechanical pullies Kelly Kirby and his mechanical FX team designed and manufactured provided the ability to create the wave events as hoped for by the directors.

"The 'paint' was actually colored milk. A few days of working with milk under extremely hot lights was a rewarding experience for the entire crew. The colored milk required by Andrew [Proctor, 3D animator] from The Mill was opaque and lost some of the 3D looks we were getting from plain water but he would not be able to use the clear and transparent water in his layering.

"Kelly basically created troughs of liquid through which the plows were pulled, which would create a wave. None of the wave effects' curvatures were achieved with CG. CG may have enhanced and massaged a few of the elements to make them fit into the scene.

"We went through 1,200 gallons of milk."