Asylum Gives Us an Inside Look for HBO

Asylum Gives Us an Inside Look for HBO

Tim Davies of Asylum's VFX division leads his team on an amazing media journey HBO's new brand initiative The HBO Voyeur Project, directed by RSA's Jake Scott and created by BBDO New York. Each film clip shows a cut away of stranger's apartments, giving us a peephole view into the residents sordid lives. This non-traditional effort to create a wide-reaching campaign will use the internet, on-demand, and even giant wall projection to appeal to the voyeur in us all. Executive Producer Michael Pardee notes, "this was definitely un-chartered territory for us with all the media delivery methods HBO wanted. I'm particularly proud of the projection piece...it's a big win for our company's foray into the world of non-traditional content.

Asylum Gives Us an Inside Look for HBO

"This project required creating a cross-section of an apartment building which consisted of four floors and contained eight apartments. Each apartment included two rooms, each floor consisted of two apartments and one hallway down the middle. Instead of undertaking the seemingly impossible task of shooting all four floors at the same time, one floor was re-dressed four times, then the shots were stacked on top of one another in post. Integral to the success of the production was a counter on set that enabled certain "cues" to be performed. For example, when one character is cued to run up the stairs from one level to the next, he disappears at the top of the stairs at the 42nd second mark on the level one set, then he appears at the bottom of the stairs at the 43rd second mark on the level two set. This kind of synchronicity created the fluid movement that was required. The performance on each set was well timed and choreographed, but there was still a need to slip and retime each apartment to hit key sync points accurately to the frame. Each apartment was shot without a ceiling to account for various lighting requirements, ceilings were then re-created as a matte paintings in post. The challenge was in animating the lighting changes on these matte paintings so they were affected by the same lights that were lighting the room. A matte painting of the floor joists was created to separate each floor; the brickwork was also retouched and regarded. Two CG elements were animated; the skeleton, its ribcage and skull fall from the ceiling in apartment 2A, and the glass which shatters as a result of a thrown ice bucket. One of the scenes includes a ghost effect, which was shot against blue screen and then stylized and animated in post. All of the apartments needed to be stabilized and lens distortion removed to keep them square as they were stacked on top of each other. "

Credits

Client: HBO
Title: Voyeur
Air Date: June 2007

Agency: BBDO
Chairman, Chief Creative Officer: David Lubars
Chief Creative Officer: Bill Bruce
Executive Creative Director/Art: Greg Hahn
Senior Creative Director/Copywriter: Mike Smith
Executive Director of Content North America: Brian DeLorenzo
President & CEO, BBDO, New York: John Osborn Executive
Producer: Jiffy Iuen

Prod Company: RSA Films
Director: Jake Scott
Director: Chris Nelson (Ancillary web films on HBOVoyeur.com)
President: Jules Daly
EP: Fran McGivern
Producer: David Mitchell

Post/Effects: Asylum
Visual Effects Supervisor(s): Tim Davies, Mitch Drain
Lead Compositor: Tim Davies
Smoke Compositor(s): Adam Frazier, Scott Johnson
Lead Shake Compositor: John Stewart
CG Supervisor: Sean Faden
CG Producer: Jeff Werner
Modeling: Greg Stuhl, Ann Sidenblad
Matte Painter(s): Tim Clark, Shannon Burkley
Texture Artist(s): Tim Clark, John Hart
Animation: Matt Hackett, Kevin Cullhane
Tracking: Mike Lori
FX TD: Stu Mintz
Rigging: Kevin Cullhane
EP: Michael Pardee
Producer: Darcie Tang
AP: Ryan Meredith
Coordinator: Steven Poulsen, Sarah Scruton

Editorial: Butcher Editorial

Music: Search Party Music
Music Supervisor: Stephanie Diaz-Matos, Randall Poster
Composer: Scott Hardkiss, Clint Mansell, Dean & Britta, M83, Theodore Shapiro, Carlos D, David Torn

Asylum
Asylum is a premier visual effects and design company, handling high-profile features, commercials, music videos, and emerging media content for web and mobile platforms. Asylum created the visual effects for such films as Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World (Academy Award and BAFTA nominated), Moulin Rouge, Minority Report, Phantom Of The Opera, Pirates Of The Caribbean ll & lll, Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, Tony Scott's Dejà Vu, Man on Fire & Domino and Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down. Asylum has done spot work for brands such as Nike, Sony Playstation, Coke, BMW, Gatorade and Visa. In addition, Asylum Design has created award winning title and graphic design work for such films as Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, X-Men I & II , The Island, Bad Boys II and XXX.

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