1. smirnoff in the post7 5
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In bringing to life the end-line of ‘extraordinary
purification’, Smirnoff Sea, directed by Danny
Kleinman, relies as much on 2d graphics as CG
3D. Sam Mitchell snuck into the studio to find
out the secrets behind some stunning visuals
Smirnoff’s latest spot, Sea, unfolds on a biblical scale as we witness the
world’s oceans cleanse themselves of mankind’s junk. The ex-flux of human
history from ocean floors sees statues, planes and boats spectacularly
hurled from the water and onto the land. As viewers might guess, the post-
production at Framestore CFC for this 60-second disaster movie was a mini-
epic all of its own.
“The thing I was most proud of was how the team worked on this job,
because it really had everything in it,” recalls VFX supervisor William
sea change
Bartlett. “It involved complex models and textures, particle systems, fluid
dynamic simulation, procedural animation and, of course, a good deal of
compositing. Add to that the numerous camera moves, either tracked or
constructed in Flame, which needed to go back and forth to 3D, and you can
imagine how important it was to keep everyone coordinated.”
Bartlett and helmer Danny Kleinman pre-vis’d the moves of camera and
objects using elements from the New Zealand shoot and rough models.
Kleinman was able to sign off on the cut before work continued in the

2. in the post smirnoff7 6
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“Luckily, the
Framestore film
department had
already done
something on
Superman
Returns, where a
kryptonite island
is raised out of a
3D-generated
stormy sea.”
3D department, which added the proper models, effects and lighting. These
elements were then returned to the 2D department. Like many VFX-heavy
commercials, this method of working becomes very fluid and increasingly
blurs the traditional 2D and 3D boundaries.
VFX CG supervisor Dan Seddon explains: “Sometimes a 2D element would
work quite well, so would be better to use than 3D because that can be very
time consuming. The simulated elements, splashes and drips of water, are
3D, but they’ll be made to look more convincing by 2D elements doing
similar things but integrating better into the plate. The sea is often CG in the
foreground but this is blended into what was actually shot to integrate
better with the horizon. So there’s a lot of mixture in terms of getting stuff
to sit together.”
This mix-and-match approach cuts time and costs. “As ever, the biggest
challenge is getting the most from the resources that the budget provides
for,” explains Bartlett. “There are many ways to approach shots and if you
have enough time and money there is very little you cannot achieve. The
trick is to find places where you can get away with cutting corners so that
resources can be saved for where they are really needed.”
To this end, the oil rig was constructed by Bartlett from hundreds of digital
stills he took around the shoot location. In this way costs for permission or
buying library shots were avoided. Shots of boats, bridges, machines and
factories were sliced up and pasted together on 3D planes to enable small
perspective changes to sit with the camera moves. Another resource-saving
trick was employed in the same section when the rushes proved too placid
to look like the North Sea in a storm.
“We didn’t know we were going to be creating so much CG-based sea when we
started,” explains Seddon. “Luckily, the Framestore film department had
already already done something similar on Superman Returns, where a
kryptonite island is raised out of a 3D-generated stormy sea. In film
production, they use complex, heavily pipelined setups, which means it’s
broken down into the steps that different people create. In this case it was just
one person doing the sea. A film department can spend months developing a
technique, but that’s time we don’t have. We’ve now got the tools to do more
sophisticated stuff: and the team becomes more powerful.”