Imagine being immersed in an HD animated computer display nearly as long as a football field as you walk down the American Airlines terminal arcade at JFK. To introduce Microsoft's Windows Vista OS, experiential design specialist Tronic, New York City, created a :60 computer-animated, immersive digital branding experience that plays across 230-feet on 40, 70-inch plasma screens, which debuted for the Vista launch January 30th.
HD for 40 Giant Screens
Tronic was commissioned by Interpublic Group's McCann Worldgroup / MRM Worldwide, San Francisco, to create high-definition CG content for the 40 giant screens, a key element of Microsoft's global marketing campaign for Vista. Given little more than a month to turn the project around from concept to HD masters, Tronic developed the creative not only for JFK, but for use on a Times Square jumbotron, as an HD theatrical spot, a digital billboard on Sunset Boulevard (Santa Monica, CA), online streaming banners, and as an animated subway flipbook.
In total, Tronic Studio led the creative development and production of over 60 seconds of original CG content, consisting of several scenes that in a captivating, humorous way characterize the abilities of key Vista functions. "We had five weeks to conceptualize the Vista brand campaign theme 'Wow!' and produce several computer animated vignettes that communicate key components of the new operating system," said Jesse Seppi, co-founder and creative director of Tronic. "We worked closely with Frauke Tiemann, Vista's creative director at McCann, to develop a series of animations that describe the main component of the operating system."
Immersed in 3D HD Vista at JFK's American Airlines Terminal
Walking through the giant plasma displays at JFK's American Airlines terminal one is surrounded by a continuous loop of colorful HD CG animation. The kinetic spot opens with "The WOW! Starts Now," then the Vista logo drops into view and rapidly extrudes into a myriad of representations of icons, page views, applications, folders, navigation, search and security sequences, climaxing in a cascade of colorful 3D Microsoft logos as if filling a candy jar.
"We wanted to create an elegant panorama of the user experience showing a glimpse of everything available through your computer with Vista," said Vivian Rosenthal, Tronic's co-founder. "3D animation was key to communicating the prominence, elegance and physicality of the Microsoft logo, and in general the operating system, and so the logo extrudes to reveal its many dimensions, from navigation, to media player, to search and finally, security functions, all of which are featured in vignette treatment."
For example, the new search function is illustrated by a magnifying glass on the hunt first it finds an elephant, then a monkey to demonstrate the accelerated search for everything on the desktop. Or, the security vignette, which is perhaps the most playful of the animations, casts the Microsoft logo as a shield fending off attacks by a horde of minute robotic viruses, in a humorous dramatization of the enhanced function.
HD -x5 in Multiple Formats
All of the CG animation, which was handled at Tronic, had to be conceived and animated to work across an unusually horizontal frame of 10,000 pixels wide by 1080 pixels tall. "This was a complex production challenge due to the many format and spot lengths we rendered in high definition," said Seppi. "First we focused on producing the five screen JFK narrative and then reanimated that content to work within all the different aspect ratios, from Times Square to the cinema spot to the Sunset Boulevard billboard. The final renders for JFK, rendered at what was essentially HD x 5, were quite time intensive to say the least."
Key Elements Microsoft Vista Immersive Branding Experience
JFK Airport, American Airlines Terminal
One 60-second spot for 1 pod. 5 HD screens form 1 pod. 4 pods go along each wall. 2 parallel walls form the installation. In total 8 pods, 40 screens. Each screen measures 5.5' by 3.5' and each pod measures 27.5' by 3.5'.
Times Square, Manhattan
One 45-second 16:9 and 4:3 spot. The 4:3 spot is playing on the CBS jumbo LED screen (20' by 26') on 42nd street between Broadway and 8th Avenue. Next to the LED screen a building has been covered with a temporary hard-body screen (27' by 48') that has a 16:9 version of the spot being projected onto it after dark.
Santa Monica, Sunset Boulevard billboard
One 45-second 4:3 spot, will run on two giant LED screens on Sunset Boulevard. One measures 8' by 12' and the other is 19' by 24'.
Cinema advertisement
One 15-second 16:9 spot with audio - Search.
Online Streaming media
Three 15-second 4:3 spots with audio - Search, Security, Flip 3D.
New York City Subway
One 15-second 4:3 spot - Flip 3D. Shown as a "flip-book" when a subway car moves past printed posters of each frame of the spot creating the illusion of a moving image. The spot will run on lines in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Toronto.
Toolkit
3D Studio Max and Brazil
Credits
Director Tronic Studio
Animation Tronic Studio, New York city
Creative Director Jesse Seppi
Art Director Vivian Rosenthal
Producer Toby Sowers
Agency McCann Worldgroup / MRM Worldwide
Agency Creative Director Frauke Tiemann
Agency Producer Lee Anne Ramsey
Audio Composition Human Worldwide, New York. Audio Mix - Audio Engine