When a viewer sees the face of a 12-year-old boy, sweetly warning that the decisions he makes now will affect his health when he's much older - they expect a 12-year-old body to be attached. As the camera dollies out from just this subject in "Doctor's Office", that prepubescent face is attached to a titanic, obese body.
This is just the latest bit of magic to emerge from Dashing. The studio teamed up with OPC Directors Woods + Low and Bensimon Byrne to craft the attention-grabbing spot — a warning from the Ontario Ministry of Health Promotion and Sport about the dangers of not establishing a healthy lifestyle.
Dashing was involved early on in the process to ensure a believable spot. One of the principal challenges was fulfilling an agency mandate that the spot be seamless and real, and also not so disturbing that it distracted from the central message.
While the concept of accurately attaching a 12-year-old boy's head to a 40-year-old overweight man's body is simple in concept, it required complex execution. To seamlessly track the boy to the man, tracking markers were placed in positions of equal proportions all over the face and upper body on both characters. They then shot multiple passes of the head in different positions to cover any parts of the performance that didn't allow for clean integration.
The biggest VFX challenge was getting an accurate track across the neck and chin of both the boy and man. The fat rolls on the man's chin moved inconsistently and differently than the thin neck of the boy, making tracking markers appear and disappear with small gestures and head movements.
"It became clear that this was more than a 2D tracking challenge, and would have to be solved using a combination of 2D and 3D tools," said Dashing Founder/VFX Supervisor Rob Moggach. "We tracked the heads in 3D to accurately capture the subtle variations in perspective as the man or boy spoke, then applied it to the head of the boy and body of the man so both moved in unison. With some adjustment to shadowing and careful attention to tracking accurate mattes along the jawline, we got it right."
Using Linux workstations and working in Maya and Nuke for 3D tracking, Silhouette for rotoscoping, and Autodesk Flame for the final compositing and online, Dashing spent three weeks completing both this spot and a companion French version that used entirely different talent and dialogue.
"We're happy we can take the time to focus on the details with jobs like this. The subtle details are what we hope will set the quality of our work apart," noted Moggach. "We were fortunate to be a part of a great creative team that supported our approach with a truly collaborative spirit. Everyone had a common goal and engaged to create a great spot."
Anchored by Founder/Creative Director Robert Moggach, Executive Producer Danielle Lyons and a select team of top digital artists, Dashing is tailor-made for handling projects with demanding and unconventional, creative and technical challenges.