I dont know if this is already in the believe video (i�m too lazy to search it) topic,so...







GETTING THE CHEMISTRY RIGHT



The promo for the latest Chemical Brothers single, 'Believe', which premiered on MTV on 18th March 2005, offers an unnerving and blackly humorous glimpse of a mind at the end of its tether. Directed by Dom & Nic, and produced by John Madsen for Factory Films, 'Believe' features some spectacular 3D work and artful compositing from the Framestore CFC Commercials team.



'Believe' shows us scenes from the life of a young man whose job at a car factory becomes increasingly untenable as he starts to catch glimpses of a mechanical creature that seems to be following him. The creature - an unholy amalgam of parts drawn from the car assembly line robots - becomes increasingly threatening in its pursuit of our hero, and the video moves towards a surprising and ambiguous conclusion.



Shoot and Run

Directors Dom & Nic had recently worked with Framestore CFC on the acclaimed 'Hector's Life' spot for Renault. During that shoot, the Framestore CFC team had done some tests using a Mini DV camera, and Dom & Nic were keen to explore this medium further. "We loved the look of it - it felt more 'real', with the camera being hand held and everything," says Dom Hawley, "A narrative based promo like 'Believe' can be very expensive, with all the time required for 35mm shooting, and it struck us that by integrating CG into DV footage, we could dramatically cut the costs, while still delivering an exciting and intriguing story." They discussed the logistics with VFX Supervisor Ben Cronin, who realised that, with no blue-screen material planned, a straightforward insertion of the 3D elements was quite manageable. "They had their own Panasonic DV camera with a Leica lens, and that was it ? we were good to go."



So, with a crew that consisted of Dom, Nic, Producer John Madsen, a camera assistant, Cronin and actor Luke Jardine, the 'Believe' shoot took place over 6 days in February 2005. Cronin was impressed at the speed of the process. "It was a great shoot to be on ? no setting up, just shoot and hop on a bus to the next location," he recalls, "It got a little frantic at times. For the sequence on the bus we needed some reflection elements from the bus window. So the producer (John), the AD and I waited at a bus stop holding a black card. The bus approached, with Dom and Nic on it filming Luke and talking to us on the phone. When the bus pulled up, John got on and distracted the driver, while I ran round the back with the card and they filmed it."



Another key location on the shoot was the MG Rover car plant at Longbridge. "We tried about twenty different car factories, before Rover said they were up for it, "says Hawley, "So we were very relieved. We gave Howard Sly (Framestore CFC Senior Modeller) some ideas for the design, and Animator Alex Doyle came along to Longbridge and took further reference images. The look of the robot was a deliberate pick 'n' mix of elements from the factory machinery ? a sort of self-assembled, automated Frankenstein's monster. It lurches along with an ungainly, very mechanical gait." As Alex Doyle recalls, "I used the reference images to Model the robot. These photos proved to be an invaluable source, enabling the robot to be built in proportion and move correctly when animated. They were also a great reference when applying the fine details to the model, which helped create a stronger sense of realism."



Mental Arithmetic

For the Framestore CFC animation team, the stilted, robotic movement ? so unlike the organic, creaturely motion they're usually called upon to mimic - was just one of the things that made this project a little different. In order to meet the deadlines ? and because he likes a gamble - Andy Boyd, Head of 3D, decided that 'Believe' would be a good opportunity to use Image Based Lighting with Mental Ray to light and render the creature work, marking a change from the team's previous working practice of using Maya's own renderer.



"With over 30 shots to do in a very short time," says Boyd, "The IBL/Mental Ray set-up meant that everything would be basically in one beauty pass. Taking the lighting information we'd gathered on the shoot, we would do a lighting set up and create a master shader, which Senior Technical Directors Jamie Isles and Chris Syborn and I could artistically test for each shot. So all we had to do was replace the environment image, and we could race through it. So we ended up giving Ben (Cronin) a total of three passes to comp ? the beauty, the special multi-light pass that gave him some grading control, and a shadow pass ? and that was it. On some jobs we've handed him 6 to14 passes, which would have given him very little time."



Senior TD Chris Syborn created a set up to control the robot's cabling and wires via Maya's dynamic hair tools. Given that the schedule was so tight, there wasn't time to go in and hand animate secondary cable animation for over 30 shots, so by treating each cable as an individual (albeit gigantic) hair, real dynamics could be applied to its movement. So a sudden stop by the robot would cause the cables to continue to move in a realistic way, softening the motion and making it very natural. The results were a triumph.



Finally, the look of the robot had to be quite grubby, given its origins in the car plant. So, while Jamie Isles hand painted and textured the dirt for the 'hero' pieces of the robot's body, for much of the smaller parts, Boyd created a procedural shader that actually put a lot of little bits of dirt in, avoiding the time-consuming process of hand texturing everything.



Eye Robot

It took Cronin and Inferno Artist Chris Redding two intensive weeks to comp 'Believe'. 2D concerns they addressed included a careful grading of the robot, because taking an 'indoors' object outside, where you wouldn't normally see it, can lead to subtle colour saturation issues. For an interaction shot, where the robot clambers over a BMW, Cronin used a shiny new hire car, which he shot being bounced up and down and then vandalised further in Inferno. Additionally, the robot's 'tail' ? a huge piece of multi-core cable ? was given sparks as it bounced of some of the road surfaces.



Dom Hawley is unstinting in his praise of the results. "It was a fantastic working experience," he says, "There's a very direct relationship between us and the Framestore CFC team, which is refreshing, and they are just so committed ? giving it so many late nights."



If you want a measure of how good a job the Framestore CFC team have done, watch the video a second time, and see if the real factory robots don't look as if they must be CG?



Chemical Brothers 'Believe'

Directors Dom & Nic

Producer John Madsen

Production Company Factory Films



For Framestore CFC

VFX Supervisor Ben Cronin

CGI Supervisor/TD Andy Boyd

3D Animators/TDs Jamie Isles, Chris Syborn, Nicklas Andersson, Alex Doyle, Howard Sly, Anders Thonell, Don Mahmood, Dean Robinson, Kate Hood, Jake Mengers, Rob Holder

Senior Inferno Artist Ben Cronin

Inferno Artist Chris Redding

Post Producer Rebecca Barbour

Line Producer Linda Francini

very cool man, thanks for posting that!

That's an awesome article, robot.mx. The Believe video is my favorite from the Push The Button era. Great find, thanks for posting it!

i found a website ages ago with all dom and nic's music vidoes and commercials will find it again and post it for ye

here is the website for dom and nic's commercials go to directors and select quicktime and there should be about 20 of their commercials there



http://www.outsider.tv/

Fantastic read, thanks robot! And thanks for that link irish fan, that's a bloody great find!

Simply excellent, thanks!

Thanks for the interesting article!



I don't know whether this has been brought up here yet, but has anyone seen the ad for sony's PSP? It really bugged as to how it looks like the Believe video. It features a creature made of the PSP little logo icons (the music key, the controller, the movie strip etc.) that just crawls around a city, scaring people etc. I'm just the director of that ad saw "Believe" before doing that

* I'm sure the director of that ad saw "Believe" before doing that