ClickFire Media and Zimmerman Build the House of Halloweenies for Party City

by ClickFire Admin 11.09.2009

Pigs-in-a-blanket, cocktail wieners, kilted sausages: Hot dogs can be very popular at a party. So when Party City’s agency of record Zimmerman came up with the idea of an online haunted house populated entirely by animated hot dogs in costume-Halloweenies-to promote Party City’s 2009 Halloween costumes, ClickFire Media and partner brand Click 3X couldn’t resist.

The resulting website brings together 3D animated characters, Facebook Connect, interactivity, viral video, and a link to buy the real costumes from Party City. The two companies worked in constant collaboration.

“Our client, Party City, needed buzz in the digital space to push sales for their Halloween costumes this year,” said Eric Thomas, Associate Creative Director at Zimmerman. “We presented HouseOfHalloweenies.com, a fun and immersive experience site that both kids and moms could enjoy. We approached the ClickFire team with our vision as storyboards and wireframes, and challenged them to bring it to life. ClickFire worked closely with us on every challenge and executed our ideas at the highest possible standard.”

“That focus on seamlessness between shops and between departments is what brought me to ClickFire,” said Ephraim Kehlmann, Senior Interactive Producer at ClickFire Media. “As a producer, many times a day I just walk across the room and look at what the 3D artists are doing. I can see exactly how their work will figure into the results, and I can make adjustments on the fly.”

With a smooth workflow established for the Halloweenies project, an important question remained: Just what would a hot dog look like wearing a Halloween costume?

“One of the fun parts was taking these real-life costumes and figuring out how they would render on hot dogs,” Kehlmann said. “How would a Darth Vader Halloweenie swing a light saber in a fight with a Yoda Halloweenie? Could we make a Halloweenie basketball player dance like a jock?”

To tackle these challenges, ClickFire put all departments to work. “We shot the actual costumes in our own studio, then mapped the images and rendered them in 3D,” said Winnie Tsang, CD, ClickFire Media. “We designed the Halloweenies’ bodies and faces, and their expressions, movements, and interactions. We also created the three Halloweenies videos, :30-:60 long, and hid them in rooms for users to find and send to friends.”

Facebook Connect was a natural fit: When visitors to the site sign into their accounts from the Halloweenies’ house, friends’ names and photos appear at random in spooky portraits and on graveyard headstones. Once a visitor has populated the photos and/or graveyard, they can then post on their own wall that they visited HouseOfHalloweenies.com.

The site represents Click’s core strength: the ability to develop and execute multi-faceted interactive projects in-house, at a time when the bar for interactive online media is constantly rising.

On working with ClickFire and Click 3X Thomas adds, “Our agency creative team appreciates Click’s ability to deliver complex projects as a seamless process, especially under a tight deadline. From environmental designs and 3D animations to Halloweenie character modeling, our partnership with them made working on this project a pleasure.”

“As we all gain access to more bandwidth, interactive sites have the ability to look more like video, and the demand for that level of quality grows,” commented Peter Corbett, Click’s co-founder and president. “That means richer web sites, heavier files, and more complex solutions. Having development, interactive, and 3D animation all in-house creates a much more holistic and seamless experience for the client.”

The Creds:

Agency: Zimmerman
CD: Eric Thomas
Digital Director: Rusty Howard
Producer: Emily Barrow
Product Manager: Matt Watson

Interactive Design Studio: ClickFire Media
Producer: Ephraim Kehlmann
Director/Flash Developer: Jason Tordsen
CD: Winnie Tsang
Sr. Designer: Rob Bigwood
CGI: Susan Taafe, Jongmoon Woo

Audio Post/Sound Design: Sound Lounge
Mixer/Sound Designer: Phan Visutyothapibal

Click 3X Honors West Side Story In Campaign For MTV VMAs

by ClickFire Admin 11.06.2009

  

Click 3X, led by VFX Supervisor/Lead Flame Artist Mark Szumski just completed a series of promotional spots for the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards that celebrate the show’s return to New York City.  The videos pay homage to the theatrical classic musical West Side Story, featuring show host Russell Brand and VMA-nominated musicians performing a recreation of the signature tune Tonight throughout a series of original Manhattan sets.

The spots were produced individually and then edited together as one fully-mixed anthem.  Each have a distinct look and feature some of the biggest names in the music business belting out a hope-filled tune in anticipation of the night ahead. Ne-Yo, in classic Michael Jackson-style attire dances his way through a graffiti-laced junkyard.  Swanky Katy Perry hustles up an attitude in a rooftop garden.  Glamorous Taylor Swift sings in the rain out of the open window of a taxi.  Cobra Starship slams through the Subway in a musical parade while Leighton Meester sings on the steps.  And a cane-swinging Russell Brand sings about the awaiting night’s events through the city’s gritty backstreets.  Each of the bits uses the network’s iconic spaceman statuettes, a hallmark of the VMAs since their inception.

The various shoots each required different locations, inside and outside, on-stage and off, shot at various times of day.  Click 3X worked closely with MTV Director Sevi Peter-Thomas and Producer Kris Walter to create a campaign that maintained an theatrical performance without compromising each artist’s contemporary style.  To ensure a successful delivery, the creative and production teams from Click 3X and MTV coordinated so that the live-action and post compositing, 3D, 2D and color correct would be consistent and clear.

Peter-Thomas utilized RED Cameras for all spots. Post Millennium edited the footage and delivered EDLs to Click 3X, who would conform by importing the footage from the Final Cut Pro projects using Crimson, creating 2K DPX sequences.  The creative team then began working between two Flames and CGI pulling together a variety of elements.  Each scene had a distinct set of needs, ranging from providing atmosphere, creating skyline elements in CGI, lighting changes, and even compositing shots from multiple days. The final composites were brought to a DI process at Company 3 for a final color balance.

“Our team literally had to change the world with each shoot,” noted Click 3X’s Szumski.  “Katy Perry’s New York skyline was composited behind her on blue screen.  The interior of a Brooklyn studio became a junkyard beneath the Brooklyn Bridge for Ne-Yo’s spot.  Using HDRI imagery, we transformed a daytime shot of a downtown Manhattan back alley into Russell Brand’s nighttime jaunt to Radio City Music Hall.  Taylor Swift’s stunning Times Square cab ride was shot in a Nashville studio.  Each shot had a different set of compositing challenges, but MTV’s director, producer, and DP were all really easy to work with and the shots turned out perfectly.”

MTV tapped Click 3X to assist with the campaign after several successful collaborations earlier in the year, including the See You Sunday promos and packaging, and The Phone and Star Trek promotional campaigns.

“Click 3X is uniquely positioned to work on this campaign both because of our existing relationship with the pros at MTV and the unique technical and creative skill set that we bring,” stated Click 3X Executive Producer Connor Swegle.  “Mark’s technical expertise enables him to work closely with the live-action team to tackle the unique challenges of throughout pre-production and on set, while his creative abilities are hands on with clients and the internal team to guide the post process.  Anthony Filipakis, our head of CGI, really nailed the spots’ photo-real 3D needs, even creating an original Radio City Music Hall element to drop into a downtown alleyway, and John Budion was able to take his understanding of the creative needs from supervising on set in Nashville and bring that to his creative process on Flame.”

“This was a really high-profile project - one of the main efforts on MTV’s calendar, and we were really pleased that they selected us for the challenge,” said Click 3X President Peter Corbett.  “The logistics of coordinating the talent over multiple shoot dates and locations required close collaboration with MTV’s team.  Our team did a great job bringing some of the most talented musicians on the scene today together to create a memorable campaign that will not only drive interest in the network’s annual award show, but also managed to honor the legacy and image of West Side Story, one of America’s most iconic brands.”

The 2009 MTV Video Music Awards will be broadcast live from New York’s Radio City Music Hall on Sunday, Sept. 13, 2009 at 9 p.m. EDT on MTV. Taylor Swift will perform live, while Ne-Yo, Katy Perry and Leighton Meester will present awards.  The artists’ VMA nominations include:



Ne-Yo - Best Male Video; Miss Independent

Katy Perry - Best Female Video; Hot N Cold

Taylor Swift - Best Female Video; You Belong with Me

Cobra Starship (featuring Leighton Meester) - Best Pop Video, Best Direction in Video; Good Girls Go Bad.

The Creds:

Client: MTV

Spot Title: VMA Promos

Air Date: August 2009



Agency: MTV

Director: Seyi Peter-Thomas

Producer: Kris Walter



Post/Effects: Click 3X

Creative Director: Mark Szumski

Head of Production: Jared Yeater

Director of CGI: Anthony Filipakis

Managing Director, Broadcast: David Edelstein

Executive Producer: Connor Swegle

VFX Supervision/Lead Flame Artist(s): Mark Szumski, John Budion

Flame Artist: John Ciampa

Flame Artist: Johnny Starace

Online Editor: JD Yepes

CG Animator/Lighter: Grace Hwang

CG Animator: Jong Moon Woo

CG Animator: Kristen Pederson

CG Modeler: Paul Liaw

After Effects Artist: Tom Matheu

Junior Flame Artist: Salvatore Randazzo

Junior Flame Artist: JD Yepes

Shake Roto: Sophia Avgousti

Producer(s): Rob Meyers, Jared Yeater

ClickFire Tests Its Skills On MTV Public Awareness Campaign

by ClickFire Admin 08.17.2009

ClickFire Media has created dynamic new web content and a Facebook application for GYT: “Get Yourself Tested,” a new campaign developed by MTV and the Kaiser Family Foundation to increase testing for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among those under 25 years of age. Working in conjunction with MTV’s public affairs department and the Kaiser Family Foundation, ClickFire adapted the music channel’s overall GYT design to create a complementary web presence.  The Web site - www.gyt09.org - includes information, social media inputs and outputs, and celebrity informational videos from Perez Hilton, N.E.R.D., and Cornel West, among others.

GYT is an extension of MTV and Kaiser’s Emmy - and Peabody - winning “It’s Your (Sex) Life” (IYSL) public information partnership to promote responsible decision making about
sex.  MTV and Kaiser worked with Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and other partners nationwide to increase community engagement in the campaign.  The “GYT” acronym was inspired by the social media space and its fondness for shorthand slang: LOL, BRB and OMG.  The GYT web content is framed within the broader IYSL campaign site, www.itsyoursexlife.org.  The Kaiser Family Foundation, consulting with other substantive experts, provided all informational content on the site.

The diverse and creative content produced by MTV and Kaiser has been multiplying across the web, appearing on YouTube, in blogs like PerezHilton.com, and integrated into social networking sites including Twitter and Facebook.  The Facebook application allows fans to tag their profile pictures with a GYT mark to help spread the word about STD testing.

“This project was exciting,” said Executive Producer Connor Swegle.  “It was a big project with us working directly with MTV to architect and develop a completely organic site around an important issue for young people.  Having the site work using social media applications allows larger access to the tools young people need.”