Nestle Ice Cream comes ‘Alive’

The Skinny

An ordinary world is transformed to an exciting summer experience with every tub of Nestle Ice Cream’s Summer delights. Sharon Cuneta, the product’s endorser, marks summer by sharing Nestle’s Summer flavours for 2009. Sonny Bautista, Mondo Armedilla and their team conceptualised what represents a summer experience best. Aside from the usual summer cues, graphic design elements pertaining to summer were showcased in the spot that captured wonderment and festivity.

The Production

The sets were really big and deep; it had to be constructed a few days ahead. The intricate design elements were also created live. Some of them, however, were generated during post. The project had an extremely limited timetable, so wherever possible, the graphic elements were printed onto the walls and furniture in different chroma colours.

In theory, this would take weight off the post house as all they would have to do is key out the graphics and change the colours accordingly. This became a challenge when the team had to light the chroma evenly and still maintain the natural shadows that come from single source lighting.

The spot was shot using ARRI 435 and ARRI 3 with two sets of Zeiss Ultra Primes. Shooting on film (Kodak 250D) also captured most details in the highlights and shadows, as there would be under-lighting in certain chroma areas. The Ultra Primes were chosen because they are incredibly sharp and provide the edging detail for all the keying-out that the post house

would do.

DoP Shayne Sarte and director Luis Tabuena agreed that the ‘soft focus’ look could be further achieved in post. The Arri 435 was used for all the live sound shots in tandem with the Arri 3 for multiple points of coverage for slow motion sequences.

The biggest challenge was to create original graphics and animation that would encapsulate the summer wonder and excitement of Nestle’s campaign. The biggest challenge was the limited timetable.

The Post

The project duration was at least two weeks, including scanning, grading and VFX work. The team handling the project did tests for the animation and look of the graphics prior to the first day of shoot. This was done because compositing was scheduled for only a couple of days. Getting the right feel and look would take time.

RoadRunner Imaging Specialist (RIS) service, where technical experts, armed with their laptops and necessary software assist the director and DOP onset, were able to provide a sample of rough offline, list of chosen shots, and colour-grading options even while the shoot was in progress.

The shots were graded using Da Vinci resolve and most of the compositing work and animation were done in Adobe After Effects. The team used PFTrack tracking, 3D Studio Max for the butterflies and set extension.

The main challenge was getting the exact look that the director wanted. The director’s vision was really complex and there are a lot of things going on in the scenes. For instance, there were some shots that had no backplates. In some scenes, art direction completely changed.

The shoot set the tone for the overall look and feel of the commercial. In post, there was the colour grading and the tracking of the shots to match the movements of the camera, particularly for the growing plants.