Less animals as Optus repositions with launch of new brand campaign via M&C Saatchi, Sydney

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OPTUS-Girl on bike.jpgOptus has repositioned its brand in a major campaign via M&C Saatchi, Sydney that debuted last night with a 60 second TVC using breakthrough camera technology.

 

The campaign is aimed at driving customers to take another look at Optus by connecting with them on a more emotional level.

 

Says M&C Saatchi executive creative director Ben Welsh: “The commercial’s narrative is ‘boy meets girl’ but with a magical digital twist to help push reappraisal of Optus.”

 

Optus Head of Segment Marketing Gavin Williams said the campaign’s message is simple: “We share in what matters most to you. From connecting you with the people you love, to getting the hottest phone before anyone else, it’s possible with Optus.”

OPTUS-Data girl.jpgIn the TVC a yellow cube – which features throughout the campaign – acts as an enabler that transports the girl from Shanghai to her lover in an Australian country town.

Using a bespoke technique, the team at Fuel VFX visually rendered the girl as if she was data being transported across the world.

 

The viewer travels with the digitised girl in a space that morphs seamlessly from downtown Shanghai to country Australia.

 

The unique effect was achieved using specialised cameras that captured depth and  colour, scanning technology and proprietary software to pull it all together for seamless transition from virtual to real life.

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“Exploring a traditional image in a 3D way was enticing and fascinating because it worked with the idea nicely,” says Goodoil director Michael Wong.

Client: Optus

Agency: M&C Saatchi, Sydney

Executive Creative Director: Ben Welsh

Creative Director: Andy Flemming

Creative Director: Shane Gibson

Head of Strategy: Colin Jowell

Senior Producer: Loren August

Managing Partner: Christine Gardner

Account director: James Rendel

Production Company: Goodoil Films

Director: Michael Wong

Executive Producer: Juliet Bishop

Post Production: Fuel VFX

VFX Supervisor: Steve Anderson

VFX Producer: Erica Ford

Art Director: Brendan Savage

OPTUS-Window.jpgAbout the pioneering camera technology

To express the connectivity of the couple who are continents apart, Director Michael Wong gave Fuel VFX a brief that centered on a unique visual representation of the girl being transported to her lover as if she were data.

Fuel drew on the Kinect technology, Microsoft’s motion-sensing software used for its Xbox 360 interactive games. The Kinect camera captures the depth in a scene and with its low-resolution, ‘noisy’ visual output, was perfect for helping to achieve a digital look of the girl and her environment.

 

On location in Shanghai, two Kinect cameras were rigged on to an Arri Alexa digital camera, the Kinect capturing depth and the Alexa capturing colour. Lidar scans were taken of the entire streetscapes, which give long-range, detailed 3D outputs in high resolution. Further, hundreds of photogrammetry stills were also taken to support the Lidar and to give it colour information later in the process.

 

The visual effects team developed proprietary software that allowed for a streamlining of data acquisition from the Kinect camera to enable the production team to review the footage while on location. For production, this saved time, money and negated the need for a studio shoot.

 

Back at Fuel’s Newtown studio, artists used a suite of technologies to combine the elements from the Kinect data, the Alexa footage, the Lidar scans and photogrammetry to re-build a complete CG representation of the environment and the action within it, followed by the transitions from virtual to real life.