Love at first sight can manifest itself in many ways. It can be sweaty palms, butterflies in the stomach... or a heartbeat that literally destroys a building, leaving hapless residents struggling to escape the carnage.

The latter is the concept behind Axe Pulse "Quake", helmed by Rebolucion's Armando Bo via Vegaolmosponce, Buenos Aires. A marked departure from the overtly racy work oft associated with the brand, "Quake", with its outwardly cool protagonist whose heart pounds at a mere glance from his beautiful muse, is somewhat sweet in its romanticism. But this is Axe, so getting too sentimental was out of the question.

"We wanted that romanticism to be somewhat dark, not sappy," says Bo. "After all, a glance can show much more than a supposedly sexy action."

Cue the carnage. As the protagonist puts his hand on the side of the building - a swank pool-side hotel - his heartbeat travels through his arm, its vibration triggering the destruction. It's the perfect balance - Axe can show off its softer side while still maintaining its manly bravado.

"What we had in mind was that if we had a building fall down via this 'earthquake', we had to compensate for that violence somehow," explains copywriter Mario Crudele about the machinations of Axe-style amour. "And we thought [we could compensate] with romance on the other end."

The destruction of the hotel is pure mayhem. But, behind the scenes, there was a meticulously planned process involving live action, VFX, CG and miniatures.

"The VFX pre-production was extremely important," says Franco Bittolo, VFX director at Buenos Aires-based Bitt Animation, about the month-and-a-half long planning process. "We sat down with Armando and his entire team - the art director, set designer, mockup artists - to see the boards in detail and break down every shot, considering what was going to be done by each member. It was then decided what was going to be 1:1 or 1:3 mockups, what should be technical effects and what was going to be post-produced."

Bo then set out to find a location. The production's tight budget restricted travel, but the director knew of the perfect local spot for the shoot.

"I was familiar with this amazing place in Quilmes, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, called Club Pejerrey, which is pretty run down and desolate," he says. "Incredibly enough, they had painted it a year before our shoot. But the art direction team had to work hard to make it look nicer, like a hotel in Saint-Tropez."

On set, the team choreographed a number of action sequences including a stunt where a woman leaps and grabs for dear life onto a pole after the balcony cracks in half.

"We built a very large set on the balcony and sketched out exactly where the balcony had to crack, where the girl should be hanging and where the camera should come in," explains Bo. "Under the balcony we put in some cranes which shook and caused the rupture. It was the most Disneyland-like shoot I have ever done."

Another scene tested the mettle of one of the grips after it couldn't be completed by a stunt worker.

"We had problems with the underwater scene in the pool," says Bo. "We filmed in winter, the water was very cold and we didn't have the budget to heat it. We discussed it with the stunt woman who was going to do the scene and she said she could do three shots. She got in the water and, by the time we were ready to do the second shot, she could hardly breathe because the water was so cold. She didn't want to go back in, so one of the grip guys said he would do it and we did the two other shots. It was maddening, but very funny."

In the studio, the team reproduced a 1:4 model of the hotel, a life-size reproduction of the staircases and hallways, and three more models - one on a scale of 1:10 for wider shots and two at 1:5 for close-ups.

"Trying to rupture the miniature models was awful," sighs Bo. "We had to put off filming for one day because we couldn't finish the models in time. It was the last thing we shot and we were all exhausted. When they were supposed to break, they didn't. After spending eight hours trying to break them using a very modern system that we had tested several times, we ended up breaking them manually, pulling on some wires and cables. It was very Ed Wood."

It may have felt like Ed Wood, but it didn't look Ed Wood. Realism was key, and it was up to Bitt Animation to make the wreckage as believable as possible.

"Once we got the final footage, our work was to create and paint the cracks that expand through the walls and floor and generate the collapse," says CG director Cristian Morales, who also notes that the Bitt team requested extra footage of dust and rocks on location to comp into the final destruction footage.

"We did a lot of tests where we recreated CG cracks on different walls to study how they were affected by the same lighting that we had on set," adds Bittolo. "The main challenge was to get the look of a real disaster, and from a technical point of view, the cracks were the most difficult thing to do. But Armando was pretty clear: 'This should look real. Absolutely believable.'"

Rebolucion http://www.rebolucion.com
Bitt Animation http://www.bittanimation.com