HP 'All Grown Up'

A year after San Francisco based agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners created Hewlett-Packard's hit global advertising campaign 'Personal Again', Bruce Watt, Regional CD and Robert Tsao, Deputy Regional CD of Saatchi & Saatchi in Singapore - responsible for HP's account throughout APAC - enlisted the help of Blackmagic Design to make Asia Pacific's very own version of this uniquely quirky and eye-catching ad.

In contrast to the use of celebrity endorsers like Jay-Z and Pharrell Williams found in the US versions of the ads, Saatchi & Saatchi decided to focus instead on making the HP product the hero of the spot while retaining the same distinctively fluid visual.

'The script was handed to me by Bruce and Robert - they have excellent vision and love to bounce ideas around. I took a lot of this onboard and looked at other HP TVCs from the same campaign and wanted to extend what the audience had seen before. I have always wanted to incorporate a lot of 3D since most of the other TVCs had mostly concentrated on using 2D techniques,' explained director Karl von Moller.

'All Grown Up' sees a young teenage girl highlight the multiple uses of HP's new Pavilion Desktop PC with its removable Pocket Media Drive through a seamless series of actions depicting everything from video editing to music storage. As only the torso of the young talent is seen on screen - with everything else in the spot created in 3D - her gestures and body language were key in conjuring up the necessary cool, young, funky ethos for the ad.

Casting call saw over 40 hopefuls competing to see who could meet the exacting criteria set by producer Leollyne Teng of The Shooting Gallery Asia and director Karl von Moller of Artisan Films. 'The talent we were looking for had be really good with her hand gestures in order to express herself and effectively deliver the message to the audience,' explained Leollyne. The series of gruelling casting sessions paid off however and a surprisingly young talent stepped up to the mark.

'My main aim was to find an elegant way to link all the girl's actions into a fluent routine... kind of like learning a dance routine and she really did surprise me with her ability - keep in mind she's only 14! I had to film the girl as a one shot live action event and get her to imagine all the 3D elements around her. Not only that, she had to keep time to when I wanted to see things happen and of course, keep to 30 seconds of screen time,' explained Karl.

Choreographing the actions of the young talent required a little preparation prior to the shoot, with Blackmagic Design editing an animatic complete with guide voice over to get a feel for timings. The animatic was then played back on shoot on a large LCD positioned above the camera combined with a 'flipped' live feed of the young talent using a vision mixer. 'We mixed her own image with the animatic so that she could see where her hands would have to be. The voice over helped to keep her to time. In the end, she learned the moves so effectively, we actually switched off the screen on the last couple of takes and she got it perfectly! This method definitely was the right approach,' explained Karl.

As an added level of insurance, Blackmagic Design VFX Director Damien Yang also attended the studio shoot to ensure the young talent's performance could be effectively combined with all the 3D post design elements. Commented Bruce, 'I appreciated the fact that Blackmagic was there for the shoot to ensure they got what they needed for post.'

Post production efforts focused on two critical factors essential to the success of the ad. One was to achieve a perfect, seamless interaction between the talent's gestures and a multitude of 3D objects; the second was to ensure all the 3D had a truly life-like, photo-realistic finish.

Damien explained, 'We had to make sure that all the elements in the shot looked real. Like when she flips the CD, a shadow of it is formed on her shirt or when she spins the disco ball, we have to capture the correct lighting and reflections.'

To help achieve the necessary photorealism, the Blackmagic Design team used HDRI (High Dynamic Range Imaging) rendering techniques. 'Lighting calculations performed in a larger dynamic range provide us with much more realism than using conventional lighting and rendering approaches,' explained Blackmagic Design 3D/VFX Artist Vincent Yoe.

The Blackmagic Design VFX team's efforts didn't go unnoticed by director Karl, who commented, 'Many great ideas and techniques came from the Blackmagic team. Principally Damien, who handled all the flame compositing. He really did oversee the finessing of the finer details which I greatly appreciated. His enthusiasm certainly encouraged not only myself, but also the agency. The 3D team at Blackmagic are also brilliant. We did ask a lot from them - a mix of realism and fantasy - it's not easy to pull off but I think they did exceptionally well. Blackmagic also have an excellent illustrator in Freddie Coles who created among other things, the little game character which I really love.'

CD Bruce Watt added, 'I was really impressed with the team at Blackmagic, their attention to detail and total commitment to producing work of an international standard in what was a very short amount of time. The first time the client saw the spot they were delighted and bought it without any changes, which is virtually unheard of.'

'In post, Bruce and I would often arrive early at Blackmagic to see their latest developments. Many of our visits were for a single element or to approve an overnight render. Still, we found ourselves wanting more time to appreciate the great work these guys did for us and I think I asked them to play each sequence a hundred times,' added Karl.

And it would seem that HP was pleased with the end result too, as the spot - which was originally slated to run throughout the entire APAC region - is also now going on air in the US and Canada and going online across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This makes 'All Grown Up' one of the first truly global commercials to have been produced out of Singapore.

'There were so many challenges along the way but this was one of the smoothest jobs I have experienced in a long time. The Blackmagic team helped solve them one by one. I think we had a very good plan and importantly, had answers to questions along the way,' commented Karl.