Asda - Tweets

Asda stands out from its competitors this Easter in a new spot featuring a funky little chick, dancing to the beat of its own tune. Created by VCCP, Asda Chick builds on the recent Snowman and Scarecrow iterations, as part of the supermarket chain’s on-going ‘Beat Not Match’ marketing push.

It was very important to Director Christian Bevelaqua that all moves should be captured 'in camera', that the chicks were actually performing the dance moves in situ on the miniature set, and that no CG legs or blue screen be used. To accomplish this Rushes worked closely with Christian, under close supervision of a vet, to discover ways in which we could 'puppeteer' the young chicks to appear to be dancing to music. It was discovered that by standing the chicks on small pieces of cardboard they would happily allow their feet to be moved around. The challenge in post was therefore the removal of these miniature cardboard rigs and re-compositing of the chick’s legs and shadows onto the floor of the set.

Rig removal and replacement within Flame was accomplished via rotoscoping, painting, tracking and 3D projections of the chick’s feet to give a photo-real finish. Setting the chick’s feet back onto tracked floors, enhanced with further subtle embellishments, such as scratches on the wood floor and dust from the chick’s feet and floating pollen in the air, added to further enhance the composites. Branches and foliage were defocussed and added in the foreground of several shots to add to the feeling of peeping into the tree.

The ending shot, of Asda chick spreading his wings and singing on the table, was a composite of three separate plates (chick in position on the table, chick flapping its wings, and the chick’s beak opening and closing). Flame artist Matt Jackson retimed and tracked these plates together to create the final composite, layering animated chick fluff into place in order to seamlessly join the wings to the body.

Rushes Simone Grattarola commented on the final grade, “It’s warm with nice pink accents in the sky and natural chick tones throughout. We tracked the bird houses with their supermarket colours and seamlessly integrated the VFX shots, enhancing the wonderful sets and art direction.”

Rushes VFX lead Leo Weston adds, “This was a really creative and collaborative effort from everyone, it was a great pleasure to work with Christian, Malachy, and all the team at Stink plus everyone involved from VCCP and Asda.”

Director Christian Bevilacque comments, "I really enjoyed the experience with rushes. A Lovely, dedicated team with plenty of
consideration towards doing as best a job as possible. It really was a very collaborative, creative process with lots of communication, skilled work and a real sense of making sure everyone is happy... that's a personal touch I really like.
We weren't exactly graced with much time in the schedule, so I'm really impressed to see how Leo and the team took it on the chin and all chipped in to crunch the work load and deliver a rrrrreally lovely result."

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