Response to Larry

Hi Larry,

Wow! Those were some very nice compliments. I really appreciate that people enjoy these spots as much as I enjoyed making them. Even though I worked on them, I still get tingles watching them sometimes, because these movies are so great and so important...doesn't it make you want to just stay in and watch old movies all day? It makes me want to.

These two spots were quite a big undertaking as you thought. I did them with two friends of mine who have a small Brooklyn-based studio, Fresh Paint. They are both Maya guys and did all the 3D and compositing (working around the clock for over a month). The compositing was all done in After Effects. As far as editing hours go...well, it took a long time. I think the 2008 spot may have taken longer, as we were in chartered territory. The 2009 spot posed an entirely different challenge...to keep it feeling fresh! We were very careful not to just rehash the same spot and ideas from the year before. There are, of course, some similarities in places, but we were happy in the end that it felt different than the previous year's.

Both years presented the unique story telling challenge of not only developing a two dimensional narrative of classic movie clips, but also of moving that narrative into a three dimensional space. At times it was a maddening task, to not only have clips play off each-other on screen, but to figure out how their placement and relationship to each-other would create environments that seamlessly transition from one vignette to the next.

As for shooting, all of the stagehands in the 2008 spot were shot over the course of a day on green screen. We recycled the stagehands for this year's spot, except for a couple...which I shot one afternoon with my girlfriend. In the war scene I'm the stagehand that hides behind the sandbags with a rifle, and my girlfriend is the shadow that walks off stage and waves at the end. Those were last minute additions that I did for Fresh Paint for no budget and no pay...they did not have any time or money for it, but I just wanted them in there so I took it upon myself to make it happen, haha. I don't know what the overall budget was, but I know that there was less budget for this year's, even though the previous year's spot had swept the BDA awards. It was especially strange that there was less budget,seeing that they wanted the 2009 spot to be a full :30 seconds longer than the 2008 one. Oh well...I guess it is just the economy.

Hope that clears things up!

Cheers,
Eli




Eli Mavros