VARIETY PACK: Optimus for Gatorade
Screen Magazine 11/11/05 byJulie Mynatt
Craig Lewandowski of Optimus (Chicago) has worked on many memorable spots over his tenure as editor. This year, Lewandowski completed three very different spots for Gatorade, through the drink's agency element79partners (Chicago).
The most recently completed work, "Winning Formula," is perhaps the most technically complex of the three. The spot opens on Michael Jordan, in his prime on the Chicago Bulls, taking a crucial shot and missing. The next scene shows an Oakland Athletics-era Jason Giambi rounding for home and being called safe. The scene then moves to San Francisco 49ers Dwight Clark missing an end-zone catch. The Gatorade Sports Science Institute (GSSI) then shows us athletes being monitored and tested, so that the perfect formulation of Gatorade can be provided for sports heroes and average Joes alike. The spot ends with Jordan making the basket, Giambi called out and Clark making "The Catch."
The revisionist history is visual trickery, and trickery so effective that bar-talk and webloggers are buzzing. Production company Tight and visual-effects company Hydraulx collaborated with the agency and Lewandowski under an incredibly tight turn-around to make it happen.
"This was an odd spot, in that we did a rough edit before [it was] even shot," says Lewandowski. Lewandowski created a rough edit with placeholder footage for the GSSI footage as well as the re-created sports moments in order to get a sense of how much actual footage was needed.
"As soon as [the new footage] was shot, I got the footage and started cutting right away," says Lewandowski, who is based in Chicago but worked out of Optimus' Santa Monica facility for this project. Due to the immense amount of technical work that was required - each of the winning moments was recreated with body doubles and elaborate motion control movements then composited together to match the original camera work - it was vital for Lewandowski to be available on set and in the vicinity.
With "Winning Formula" as an example of an elaborate, effects-heavy project, "It's in the Cooler" is its opposite, as well as a departure overall for Gatorade. Each segment (a basketball court, a beach volleyball court, a rainy soccer sideline, a track-and-field setting, a baseball dugout, a football sideline) is shot from overhead, with a small white disc in the lower right of the frame. The camera swoops down onto the disc in the final segment, revealing that the small disc is in fact the top of the well-known, barrel-shaped, orange Gatorade cooler.
"We were able to take our time [with 'It's in the Cooler']," says Lewandowski. "As an editor, a lot of times you want to leave your stamp on a project, but sometimes that means leaving it alone. It was such a simple edit, visually. Once we came up with what would work, we put a lot of time into the sound design, letting the [it] be the driving part."
Lewandowski takes a lot of interest on a project's sound design and music. For "It's in the Cooler," Chicago Recording Company's Mark Ruff handled the audio. "I try to stay as involved [in the audio production] as I can," says Lewandowski. Lewandowski created a rough audio track and gave it to Ruff with notes, explaining what he thought would be interesting. "We went over [to CRC] and worked as a team in [Ruff's] room," says Lewandowski. Ruff's resulting 5.1 surround audio takes what could be an ordinary spot and creates immersive environments from simple imagery on screen.
"Just Wrong," the third piece Lewandowski worked on for Gatorade this year, has similarities with the effects-driven "Winning Formula." We have all seen the classic moments of sports players dumping a cooler of Gatorade over a coach's head after a win, or sipping from cups of Gatorade on the sidelines. It is a part of sports. "Just Wrong" shows what would happen if Gatorade was not available for players. Charlotte Bobcats' player Jahidi White is seen sipping cappuccino between plays. Football players ladle bright pink punch into cups. A tennis player guzzles from a can of tomato juice. A baseball player sips a milkshake in the dugout. A coach gets a giant smoothie dumped over his head.
"There are some pieces in the spot that were shot practically with extras in the background to make it look like it was in the environment, and then there are other scenes where we took something that was in the environment and comped them into the scene," says Lewandowski. Jahidi White's cappuccino moment was shot a few hours before an actual game; the coach that gets the smoothie shower was an elaborate mixture of live-action and visual effects.
"My involvement was choosing the scenes we were going to use in football and baseball, helping to get all of that together and choosing which scenes would be the right ones to shoot people to comp in," says Lewandowski. "Then, after they shot all of [the footage they needed], I had to do an edit. In my Avid I did a three or four layer [rough] green screen comp to get it so that all the timings were working out." Lewandowski then sent the footage to effects company Ring of Fire to complete.
Lewandowski likes the variety of work he has had the opportunity to complete for Gatorade this year. "In any position, the fear is getting pigeon-holed into one specific kind of work - this person cuts comedy, that person cuts sports, that person cuts emotion, or things like that. The fact that I was able to cut these things in a way that they were able to pull-off these things and they're all different to me was a surprise."
Screen Magazine 11/11/05 byJulie Mynatt
Craig Lewandowski of Optimus (Chicago) has worked on many memorable spots over his tenure as editor. This year, Lewandowski completed three very different spots for Gatorade, through the drink's agency element79partners (Chicago). The most recently completed work, "Winning Formula," is perhaps the most technically complex of the three. The spot opens on Michael Jordan, in his prime on the Chicago Bulls, taking a crucial shot and missing. The next scene shows an Oakland Athletics-era Jason Giambi rounding for home and being called safe. The scene then moves to San Francisco 49ers Dwight Clark missing an end-zone catch. The Gatorade Sports Science Institute (GSSI) then shows us athletes being monitored and tested, so that the perfect formulation of Gatorade can be provided for sports heroes and average Joes alike. The spot ends with Jordan making the basket, Giambi called out and Clark making "The Catch."
The revisionist history is visual trickery, and trickery so effective that bar-talk and webloggers are buzzing. Production company Tight and visual-effects company Hydraulx collaborated with the agency and Lewandowski under an incredibly tight turn-around to make it happen.
"This was an odd spot, in that we did a rough edit before [it was] even shot," says Lewandowski. Lewandowski created a rough edit with placeholder footage for the GSSI footage as well as the re-created sports moments in order to get a sense of how much actual footage was needed.
"As soon as [the new footage] was shot, I got the footage and started cutting right away," says Lewandowski, who is based in Chicago but worked out of Optimus' Santa Monica facility for this project. Due to the immense amount of technical work that was required - each of the winning moments was recreated with body doubles and elaborate motion control movements then composited together to match the original camera work - it was vital for Lewandowski to be available on set and in the vicinity.
With "Winning Formula" as an example of an elaborate, effects-heavy project, "It's in the Cooler" is its opposite, as well as a departure overall for Gatorade. Each segment (a basketball court, a beach volleyball court, a rainy soccer sideline, a track-and-field setting, a baseball dugout, a football sideline) is shot from overhead, with a small white disc in the lower right of the frame. The camera swoops down onto the disc in the final segment, revealing that the small disc is in fact the top of the well-known, barrel-shaped, orange Gatorade cooler.
"We were able to take our time [with 'It's in the Cooler']," says Lewandowski. "As an editor, a lot of times you want to leave your stamp on a project, but sometimes that means leaving it alone. It was such a simple edit, visually. Once we came up with what would work, we put a lot of time into the sound design, letting the [it] be the driving part."
Lewandowski takes a lot of interest on a project's sound design and music. For "It's in the Cooler," Chicago Recording Company's Mark Ruff handled the audio. "I try to stay as involved [in the audio production] as I can," says Lewandowski. Lewandowski created a rough audio track and gave it to Ruff with notes, explaining what he thought would be interesting. "We went over [to CRC] and worked as a team in [Ruff's] room," says Lewandowski. Ruff's resulting 5.1 surround audio takes what could be an ordinary spot and creates immersive environments from simple imagery on screen.
"Just Wrong," the third piece Lewandowski worked on for Gatorade this year, has similarities with the effects-driven "Winning Formula." We have all seen the classic moments of sports players dumping a cooler of Gatorade over a coach's head after a win, or sipping from cups of Gatorade on the sidelines. It is a part of sports. "Just Wrong" shows what would happen if Gatorade was not available for players. Charlotte Bobcats' player Jahidi White is seen sipping cappuccino between plays. Football players ladle bright pink punch into cups. A tennis player guzzles from a can of tomato juice. A baseball player sips a milkshake in the dugout. A coach gets a giant smoothie dumped over his head.
"There are some pieces in the spot that were shot practically with extras in the background to make it look like it was in the environment, and then there are other scenes where we took something that was in the environment and comped them into the scene," says Lewandowski. Jahidi White's cappuccino moment was shot a few hours before an actual game; the coach that gets the smoothie shower was an elaborate mixture of live-action and visual effects.
"My involvement was choosing the scenes we were going to use in football and baseball, helping to get all of that together and choosing which scenes would be the right ones to shoot people to comp in," says Lewandowski. "Then, after they shot all of [the footage they needed], I had to do an edit. In my Avid I did a three or four layer [rough] green screen comp to get it so that all the timings were working out." Lewandowski then sent the footage to effects company Ring of Fire to complete.
Lewandowski likes the variety of work he has had the opportunity to complete for Gatorade this year. "In any position, the fear is getting pigeon-holed into one specific kind of work - this person cuts comedy, that person cuts sports, that person cuts emotion, or things like that. The fact that I was able to cut these things in a way that they were able to pull-off these things and they're all different to me was a surprise."