XYZ delivers for Comcast

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Comcast, the largest cable and broadband company in the United States, has been funded by the Obama administration to put broadband into schools and learning centres across the country.

To tell this good-news story, agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners San Fran talked to XYZ animation director Tim Kentley about how to get the word out.

Based around the idea of a loading progress bar, Kentley believed the best way to tell the story was to take the viewer on a journey of people and places built into the progress bar space.

To achieve this, he employed stop motion, motion control cameras, live action talent, photoreal CGI, life size sets and a miniature metropolis set and made it flow as one shot.

To achieve the desired effect, the team flew to San Fran where they built the sets for seven different setups. Each setup was a different scale ranging from a life size bakery to a miniature city, yet each had to be combined in post to create the illusion of a seamless single shot.

Previsualisation of each element was created in 3D, and this data transferred onto a motion control Milo camera. Adjustments had to be made for different lenses and their inherent lens distortions, a situation none of the Milo operators had faced before.

Shooting digital meant the team was able to check each shot against a 3D previsualisation of the entire spot to ensure the take worked in the surrounding shots.

The spot is now on air in the Washington DC.

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