Nice Shoes

Nice Shoes, Shortlisted in Cannes, Celebrates a Bronze Lion Win - 06.30.2010

Nice Shoes and McGarryBowen: Three Years of Collaboration for Chase - 06.21.2010

Nice Shoes Hires Bowman To Run Design Division - 06.14.2010

Nice Shoes Redefines Red Workflow - 06.01.2010

Nice Shoes Handles Post For Myren's Latest Doc - 05.25.2010

Nice Shoes Delivers Promise In United Nations PSA - 06.07.2010

Nice Shoes Contributes To Unique Polar Bear Club Video - 05.19.2010

Profit-Sharing Model Perfect Fit For Nice Shoes On Hot Indie Films - 05.03.2010

Nice Shoes Spins Out Post For Another Indie Movie - 05.01.2010

Nice Shoes Again Collaborates With Offspring On Ford Campaign - 05.06.2010

Arias with a Twist: The Docufantasy Debuts At Tribeca Film Festival - 04.16.2010

Nice Shoes Expands VFX Team - 03.22.2010

Nice Shoes Makes A Splash With Stella For Mother - 02.23.2010

Arias with a Twist: The Docufantasy to Premiere in Berlin - 02.16.2010

Nice Shoes Hires Travis Taylor To Oversee Sales & Marketing - 02.03.2010

Revamped Nice Shoes Rolls Out Another TD Ameritrade Campaign - 01.19.2010

Nice Shoes Adds Division By Joining Forces With Freestyle Collective - 12.04.2009

Nice Shoes Brings Creative Vision and High-End VFX to the NHL - 11.01.2009

Nice Shoes Color Grades MTV VMAs Promo Starring Britney Spears & Russell Brand - 09.10.2009

Nice Shoes Color Grades and Titles Garbage Dreams - 08.12.2009

GEs Real-People - 08.06.2009

BlackBerry Loves U2 - 07.22.2009

Nice Shoes Colorist Lez Rudge Makes An Imprint On New Spot Promoting Mandela Day - 07.07.2009

Nice Shoes Names Mike Donovan Managing Director - 07.01.2009

Nice Shoes Goes Risqué For Calvin Klein Jeans - 06.23.2009

Aron Baxter Returns To Nice Shoes As New Creative Director - 06.09.2009

Nice Shoes Sponsors Dusty Festival - 05.09.2009

Nice Shoes Makes A Nice Move - 04.16.2009

First Boards Awards Hosted By Nice Shoes - 04.02.2009

"BlackBerry Bullet" Punctures Apple - 03.12.2009

Nice Shoes New York Makes $3 Million Investment in FilmLight Color Grading Systems - 03.05.2009

Colorist Ron Sudul - The Top Five Questions I Get as a Colorist for Nice Shoes - 02.26.2009

Nice Shoes Colorist Lenny Mastrandrea Participates In Mayors Office Panel - 02.02.2009

Nice Shoes Steals The Show With Electrifying VFX For Chase - 01.15.2009

BlackBerry Storm Explodes onto the Scene in Photoreal CG Spec Spot from Guava / Nice Shoes
Posted: 03.12.2009 17:21

The new BlackBerry Storm smartphone with touch screen metaphorically explodes the iPhone’s market dominance in a dynamic, photoreal CG spec spot created by Guava, now a part of Nice Shoes. The :15 “BlackBerry Bullet” uses 3D fruit to illustrate a very simple concept: A single blackberry fired like a bullet into an apple explodes out the other side in pristine condition as the supers appear...”The World’s First Touch-screen BlackBerry. Nothing Can Touch It.” Nice Shoes’s dynamic spec spot riffs on Harold Edgerton’s celebrated 1964 high-speed photograph of a bullet piercing an apple which was brought to life by the Head of Nice Shoes’s CG Department Adrian Graham, VFX Supervisor Jep Hill, and Design Director Jay Sienkwicz with the brief to shoot a blackberry through an apple. Says Hill. “I think we exceeded all of our expectations.” “Each of us has our own area of expertise,” notes Graham. “Jep has an in-depth knowledge of photoreal CG, Jay has a great design sense and a talent for timing and pacing, and I have experience in physics-based animation and pipeline development. We each brought to the table different skill-sets that together made the spot shine.” While the Edgerton photo served as a good reference for the team, “it was frozen in time so we had to figure out how things would look before and after” the blackberry bullet exploded the apple, Graham explains. “We wanted to convey the sense of travelling a long distance in a spatial environment without blurring things so they’re unrecognizable,” says Sienkwicz. “We had to fly the blackberry in the frame, explode it through the apple and keep everything in focus with depth of field and clarity. Additionally, we originally tried to emulate missile test photography where the camera overshoots the missile and the missile catches up.” But that had a very shaky look, and the design dictated a clean, linear, spatial move,” Graham reports. “We spent a lot of time controlling the explosion, keeping it in line and properly balanced so it was violent and fast enough to match the camera motion.” The team used a combination of off-the-shelf software, custom scripts and a proprietary next-generation pipeline to achieve the spec spot’s stunning results. “Coming up with unique solutions to get what we need is a key aspect of our capabilities,” says Hill. “Advertising always requires the newest, hippest and greatest. Feature-filmmaking doesn’t even use this technology yet.” As a native of music-city Austin, Texas, Jep Hill also obtained the rights to the Black Angels’ track, “Black Grease,” and added royalty-free sound effects: a bolt-action rifle cock, layered gunshots with a metal door body shot for the explosion, howling wind with chimes for an ephemeral feel and ambient hum, an air-pump whoosh, and sonar pings to cue the supers. “‘BlackBerry Bullet’ demonstrates that by tempering bleeding-edge technology with a solid foundation of design and animation Nice Shoes is able to create things you’ve never seen before,” concludes Hill. “Our potential is unlimited!"