Behind Brain Zoo’s LEGO Star Wars Commercials “Luke, I Am Your Father” and “Speeder Bikes”.

OR,

Once upon a time,

not so long ago,

in a studio in Van Nuys…

With these spots Brain Zoo was issued multiple challenges:

to locate LEGO figures in a pre-existing, well-known & well-loved world,

to maintain the integrity of the original creative property while using comedy to advertise product, and,

to complete it all in less than 2 months.

A tall order, but reliving classic moments in the original Star Wars trilogy was not something we were about to shy away from!

With great scripts from the Ad Agency we set off, knowing that much of our work, if done well, should become almost transparent.

We had access to the original film footage in HD resolution, but there were no clean background plates available. This meant that the background environment for some shots could be achieved with painstaking cut and paste magic but for many others we had to generate complete digital sets to blend invisibly with the original movies.

For example, in “Speeder Bikes” we created a moving forest environment for many shots that had no pre-existing clean backgrounds, and meticulously matched this to the original in terms of color, contrast, texture and lighting. To further enhance the visual match at the level of shot design and composition we researched the Panavision camera systems and the likely lenses that had been available at the time of filming, and used these specs to inform our digital camera/lens choices.

When it came to our characters, the LEGO models were given additional surface textures (such as toy-sized finger prints) to help counteract their inherent flat plastic look, and proxy environment textures were created which would be reflected by these characters. Darth’s helmet was treated to ‘Automotive DP Lighting 101’ – we mocked up a cylindrical environment with a hot light above and softer light falling off to the sides, this combined with the reflection of the proxy textures results in the apparent integration of the LEGO figure into the movie scene.

Concurrently, our animation team was crafting the movements that would bridge the gap between LEGO pieces and the Star Wars characters we know so well, - with enough humor for entertainment but enough faithfulness to the original for the viewer to wonder, if only for a second!

During our rendering and compositing process constant fine-tuning of the lighting, color & reflections continued as we strove to match the source. As a final touch, we added a level and quality of film grain that felt appropriate to the original and everyone agreed that the illusion was complete as our audiences did a ‘double take ‘ on seeing these spots for the first time.