Starting with an intense two-night session several years ago to perfect Under Armour’s epic :90 Protect This House by transferring 35 mm film from a weeklong shoot with multiple cameras, Mastrandrea, Lambert and Hudson have hit a hard-to-achieve synergy in the production pipeline, running off a series of mini-epics.

“I still have a soft spot for this ad,” noted Mastrandrea. “We were so meticulous with the grading process that we corrected Flash frames. There is no doubt that we were pushing even the cutting-edge technology of the time to its max. The end result embodied all the energy that the brand deserves, and really cemented a burgeoning partnership.”

Lambert, like most directors, covets talent that can enhance his work while keeping his original vision intact. “I have always been a firm believer that the final color grade of any project has as much to do with the storytelling and emotion of a piece as the editing, scripting or direction, and what makes collaborating with Len so great is that he believes this as well,” explained Lambert. “He always brings a unique and fresh perspective to the work. His passion for taking the edit and footage to levels that I may not have envisioned is always a pleasure to witness.”

Other memorable collaborations have included Under Armour’s Athletes Run, shot in Malibu, Washington, Brooklyn, Baltimore and Rome at varying times of day, a fact that required particular focus on color grading. Another full-throttle bit for Under Armour, Prepare, underscores the dynamic between production and post. While the spot deftly captures the determination of athletes to fight through the vagaries of frozen winter, Lambert, amazingly, shot the spot on an 80-degree day. Mastrandrea called in the Nice Shoes VFX crew who helped to create a full-blast winter landscape in the background and foreground, adding or blocking snow as necessary, all against an edgy color palette true to Under Armour’s brand.

“This one was an amazing challenge – to create snow, rain and high-intensity visuals,” stated Lambert. “We stepped back to our super-saturated and glossy Under Armour look and really created a stunning sports commercial. Len made our RED footage really come to life with his great eye and attention to even the smallest of elements in the frame. When I see the spot run on ESPN, it just leaps off the screen.”

Part of the team’s successful collaborations can be explained by a shared belief in an open forum of creativity. “Rip, Dave, and really the whole crew at Producers, with their outstanding creative team, excellent foresight, and openness make perfect working partners for me,” said Mastrandrea. “There is a perfect balance there in my opinion, which helps raw footage blossom into art again and again.”

Speaking to his experience of collaborating with Mastrandrea, David Hudson, editor at Producers, noted, “Lenny knows what we like, and from there, he shows us new looks and feels. Having done as many spots as we have together, I always know that we’ll spend the first hour going over several options that he will have already prepared in advance. Lenny takes ownership of each project, just as we do, and puts his heart into everything.”

Mastrandrea, who endeavors to have several potential creative approaches at the ready before a client walks through the door, has evolved at the lighting-fast pace of the industry itself, a fact that’s not lost on the similarly future-oriented Lambert. “We’ve both adapted to the always-changing visual landscape,” he stated. “It’s so important to have a colorist that understands the evolution from film to digital, and Lenny gets that better than anyone. With digital filmmaking, we both try to push the medium as far as we can to get that rich, glossy and dynamic texture we used to always capture with film.”

The 2:00 trailer is a provocative glimpse at the surreal and emotional When You Find Me, guiding the viewer through snowy white landscapes, late-night conversations between young sisters on the verge of losing their mother, and even a stop into the cockpit of a bizarrely lit and fantastic vehicle. The 8:00 behind-the-scenes video explores the film’s creative process, from the promotional spot that launched the campaign to the collaborative process between Howard and his daughter Bryce Dallas Howard, who directed the film.

“Grey asked us to keep the footage as clean and real as possible,” stated Ryan. “While integrating the various pieces of source media is a challenge with all color grading jobs, it is especially difficult with documentary pieces, when you are pulling from so many sources, including stills.”

Despite these inherent difficulties, Nice Shoes pulled off the grade in one day, thanks to the clear vision outlined by Howard and ease of collaboration between the studio’s color grading and finishing departments.

The film debuted at an elaborate event at New York’s Museum of Natural History in November, while the behind the scenes piece has been playing before most major feature film releases during December and January.

A boy called Anastacio.

Nice Shoes contributed to the recreation of a touching true story about this boy’s recovery from Leukemia. This Ronald McDonald House Charities spot premiered during Super Bowl 2012 and was directed by Malcolm Venville for Anonymous Content.

The spot shows a close up of Anastacio holding close up photographs of himself as a sick child. He lets the top photo fall to the ground and this reveals another photograph but of a healthier version of himself. This action is intercut between shots of his supportive family. Eventually we cut wide enough to see Anastacio as he lets go of the last photo and we get the message the his rehabilitation is complete.

Obviously Anastacio wasn’t professionally photographed at every stage of his illness. So that’s where our team came in –  using one healthy base photo of Anastacio
as an end point and having reference photos from a various of stages of his recovery to achieve the immediate steps.

We created the least well version first that still had to look somewhat visual appealing. It became apparent that some immediate reference could be found in colleagues with lack of hair and winter gray skin. But ultimately we used a blend of cloning techniques and photos that we took of peach fuzz, bald heads, shaved eyebrows and skin close ups. Through 5 stages we introduce more healthier skin tones and more hair but the real challenge was capturing the subtle change in the fullness of his face.

Andy Mai and Selim Yang at Nice Shoes did a wonderful job of this subtle balance and it was their collaboration that nailed the overall success of the transformation. Kudos to them.

No related posts.

The job initially came to Nice Shoes based on Lez Rudge’s relationship with Sergio Lopez, Head of Production at JWT. The two have been working together on several projects going back to when Sergio was HOP at Cramer-Krasselt in Chicago.

“Fluffed & Whipped” is a flavorful global jetset through Rose’s gilded world, a gold and ice-blue tinted surrealist wonderland in which every whim is satisfied and the party never ends. The action rolls to a stop, however, at Nice Shoes’ brilliant graphic – a shimmering Smirnoff logo bookended with two enormous vodka bottles.

To craft the shot, Nice Shoes created a lighting effect for the Smirnoff logo that enhanced the art’s metallic look and kept the essence of the spot’s great lighting. They also took special care to have all of the spot’s motion emanate from shadow elements, as Larkin requested.

“Eric wanted to add life to the end title build – the spot has so much movement and energy that he didn’t want the titles to lay flat,” noted Schreck. “By layering multiple shadow elements from different shades of the color palette and applying different warps and blurs, the shadows ended up with an almost projected quality that gave the artwork the energy Eric was looking for.”

JWT approached Nice Shoes to ensure they had a partner who would bring out the energetic quality of film and color that was integral to their concept. “Nice Shoes is good at what they do – fast with their craft, accommodating to my numerous ideas, and well prepared for guests, with the masseuse who roams the halls,” stated Larkin. “The footage was phenomenal and, somehow, Nice Shoes still enhanced the spot more than we could have imagined.”

“Obviously I was excited to work on the project when I saw the beautiful art-direction and gorgeous photography that the director had created with JWT,” said Rudge. The spot had generated so much interest that even JWT’s Chief Creative Officer, Peter Nicholson, was keen to be involved in creating the look with Eric and Lez.

“I knew this was not a spot to go gently on,” continued Rudge. “Together with Eric and Peter we crafted a beautifully vibrant yet glossy visual that completely enhances the innate depth of the spot.”

First off, we have an excellent spot for Budweiser Canada color graded by Lez Rudge, “Flash Fans,” that brings big league spectacle via flash mob to a minor league hockey game.

Then we have GE  “Seeing Is Believing: Energy & Anheuser-Busch” by colorist Chris Ryan, showing us that without GE’s turbines, there’s no Budweiser.

Finally, Lenny “The Maestro” Mastrandrea brings some beautiful color to a series of Toyota commercials that aired during the post game show, and feature game winning quarterback Eli Manning.

Since this is the internet, where opinion is FACT, I can say without a doubt, that these are the best Super Bowl commercials of ALL TIME…at least until next year.

Stay tuned for a post by VFX Creative Director Aron Baxter about the Ronald McDonald House spot that we provided VFX for.