“We do things differently on the mountain.” That’s the message at the heart of Coors’ new UK advertising campaign. The multi-channel, big-budget campaign marks the next iteration of the Molson Coors-owned brand’s “Keep It Fresh” campaign in the UK.
Untold Studios, which specializes in creating CGI animals, is behind both the production and VFX across the campaign, devised by creative agency Havas London. The campaign revolves around a fantastical new TV ad set on top of fictional Coors Mountain.
Directed by Untold Studios director/CD Diarmid, the ad features a group of friends on their way to a party when the main character orders a fresh ride for them — a pack of bears. Alongside fresh attitudes and sociability, the ad highlights Coors’ unique on-pack thermochromic ink, which causes the mountains on all bottles and cans to turn blue when Coors is mountain-cold and ready to drink.
The campaign spans TV, video on demand, cinema, out-of-home, digital and social executions and accompanies an influencer campaign from Red Havas. Media planning and buying is through Carat.
Diarmid says, “Coors is a brand that just gets comedy. These films are no exception. I love the space they inhabit — that moment the ordinary, relatable world meets the utterly extraordinary. I wanted to make that moment feel as real as possible. The bears might look completely real thanks to the VFX wizardry of Untold Studios, but, of course, they’re not. Shooting on horseback in the high mountains was a crazy adventure for everyone involved, and I really believe all those feelings and emotions make their way onto the screen.”
We spoke to Untold Studios CG supervisor Sebastian Caldwell to find out more…
How early did Untold Studios get involved? How much say did you have on the shoot? For example, could you offer input on shooting the live action in a way that would make it easier when it got into VFX?
Untold’s VFX team gave input from very early in the process, which certainly made things smoother. We were involved with shooting requirements, visual language, the CG bears, even discussions of what to do if the weather didn’t play ball… which proved to be very important!
In preproduction, VFX worked closely with our director, Diarmid, and the Untold production team, looking into the approach for shooting the cast. Typically, you’d shoot the cast riding a motion-controlled gimbal, but the high Alpine shooting locations didn’t allow for that. Plus, Diarmid felt the authenticity of shooting in the mountains would be lost if we shot in a studio. We delved deep into how bears move and walk. We found that horses were the best option, as they have similar proportions when combined with some saddle adaptations. Their plod (especially over rough ground) is close to a bear’s. And there was the added benefit that the DP immediately had something to frame up against.
What was the live action shot on?
The main unit used an ARRI Alexa 35 with Cooke anamorphics. The drone units shot with a DJI Zenmuse X7.
How many VFX shots in total?
In the main 60-second film, all but one shot had some level of VFX. This varied from bigger shots with the CG bears and rebuilds of the environment through to matte paintings, sky replacements and cleanup. Including alternate edits, it was around 30 shots in total.
What did the team use for modeling the bears/hair/digidoubles/snow? Loved how the bear shakes the snow off of himself.
The VFX team created all three bears from scratch. Each bear was given a different look and personality that could complement or juxtapose with its rider. All geometry modelling was done in Maya and ZBrush, factoring looks of the profiles we’d developed for each bear. For example, the darker bear (Tony) has saggier skin, so he’s interpreted as slightly older. We also used Maya for rigging and animation, again considering how their movement could relate to their personality.
The bears have multiple variations of unique fur sitting over muscle, fat and skin, which wobble and move dynamically when in motion. We enhanced our Houdini fur and creature FX workflows to allow for such technically complicated creatures. For the snow integration, we created a dynamic snow system in Houdini that allowed the flakes to scatter in the fur and added a layer of ground snow for kick-up and footprints. As our pipeline is Houdini-centric, all of these elements easily fed into lighting, which we rendered with Arnold in Houdini. These CG elements were all assembled and composited in Nuke.
What about the digital breath? That always seems to be easy to spot when done wrong.
CG breath can be difficult to make convincing. It needs to look, behave and interact just like real breath would. We have to carefully consider factors such as the physics of water vapor and the way it scatters light. As a rule of thumb, I feel that keeping it subtle generally looks the best. We knew from the start that getting the breath right would be the cherry on top for making the bears feel integrated into their environment — so much so that we were still working on the breath the day before we delivered!
This was a huge undertaking. What were some of the biggest challenges of the shoot and then the VFX and composite?
We shot on location in the mountains of Slovenia and Austria. Initially we intended to shoot only in Slovenia, but unseasonably warm temperatures and melting snow meant we had to add an extra location at the last minute. We ended up moving 120 crew to Austria (traveling across five countries in the process!) so we could experience freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall. Still, the opening sequence was shot in the warmer Slovenian villages, where the snow had melted. These shots had to be completely winterized in post using a combination of CG snow, CG environment elements and matte paintings.
The trickiest part of the shoot from a post perspective was a very uncooperative beaver. As is always the risk when shooting with animals, the beaver didn’t perform quite as we’d hoped. We ended up using a clever mix of stock footage, some of the footage we shot and some further augmentation.
How were you showing the agency shots? And what were some notes you got back from them?
In terms of our feedback on the bears with Havas and Coors, we were incredibly lucky to have their full trust in the process. We reviewed work using the video collaboration platform SyncSketch for remote reviews and the usual Flame in a suite for in-person reviews. We initially started by showing grayscale animation and some behind-the-scenes development of the bear, then we followed up with rendered turntables on the bears. Once we started showing in-shot renders, it was such a delight watching everyone’s faces the first time. When you start to see the project come together, and the agency and client can see that they were right to trust us, it’s extremely rewarding.
What haven’t I asked that’s important?
One of the hardest challenges was making sure the bears didn’t delve into the Uncanny Valley, mainly having to do with their performance. Real bears are very expressive, so it’s very easy to overdo the animation and fall into anthropomorphism. We paid extra attention to a selection of references from nature that conveyed the emotion, rather than taking inspiration from human behavior and expression. We found that the animation should be much less about broad strokes and more focused on the minutiae of bear expressions in order to remain believable.
