“I spent summers in high school working for our local Baskin-Robbins, so it was pretty surreal to once again work with this great brand. Bringing a fresh and new youthful voice to an iconic brand, we embraced all the joy and fun that comes with eating ice cream! The goal was to stand out and bring an edgier vibe than what the brand is traditionally known for. “
“We got the script from 215 McCann to create a musical, which of course is such an exciting prospect because the nature of musicals is just so playful and inventive. Creating this sort of musical theme around Minecraft felt appropriate because the nature of Minecraft is to be so playful. We see our singer come out, the curtains open, and then all of a sudden we see this beautiful Minecraft world. Something we’ve always enjoyed doing at Psyop is to invent new ways to create a voice for different brands.”
“One of the things we loved about this is that you start from literally a sketch on a piece of paper. then we have designers do a style frame where it’s a full color sketch. Then we start working with set designers and they start building the things that were in the sketch. We’d seen everything grow from figment to fulfillment, and then Melissa (Benoist, star of Supergirl) gets there and starts performing, it just brings all this life to it. It was breathtaking. Our highest personal accolade is when our commercials are entertainment. So how do we expand the brand’s identity and package it into a beautiful commercial? Hopefully that’s what we’ve done!”
AWARDS
IN THE PRESS
‘Stay Fabulous’ is the world’s first commercial production realised entirely by utilising virtual production, the immersive, wholly game-changing filmmaking technique pioneered by the creators of Disney+ series The Mandalorian.
Brought to life by PSYOP, well-known, long-time innovators in the commercial filmmaking world, the spot promotes the opening of Resorts World Las Vegas, a $4.3 billion, 3,500-room luxury resort in Las Vegas that’s set to open on June 24th. Creative was out of California-based Hooray Agency, features Celine Dion, Carrie Underwood, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, Tiësto and Zedd, and debuted during The Academy Awards® broadcast in April 2021, capturing the attention of Entertainment Tonight among other popular news outlets.
The “virtual production” merged CGI, real-time rendering and live action to transport viewers into a new reality. Psyop leveraged their legendary design, world building prowess, and CG capabilities to build highly stylized worlds which carefully blurred the line between physical and digital, never before done in a campaign on this scale. The CG environments were projected onto LED volumes which, when combined with art directed physical sets, created an immersive hybrid world for the celebrities to react to on set, and for the entire team and clients to experience in real time when shooting.
To meet the demands of this innovative commercial production, the large technical and creative team led by PSYOP developed evolutionary workflows, allowing filmmakers to make creative changes real time during the shoot including lighting, colours and animation within the sets – all things impossible without virtual production.
Moved by color and motion, Psyop and McKinney bring consumers along a epic journey of exploration through bold and beautiful shades from Sherwin-Williams’ Emerald Paint Collection. The team looked to fine art for inspiration, drawing from Mark Rothko and Georgia O’Keeffe as inspirations.
To craft this piece which features sharp, vivid footage of paint flowing through water at varying pressures and speeds, we teamed up with self proclaimed “visual engineers” The Marmalade. While watching the final product, most would insist that there’s nothing natural about the way the paint moves so seamlessly throughout this spot as if choreographed, but Director Eben Mears and Lead Compositor Evan Schoonmaker break it down below by giving some inside thoughts on the process of how “Epiphany” came to be.
Eben Mears, Director: I’ve tried to work with the people at The Marmalade for the last two years. This job was an absolute dream come true! Repeat work from the folks at McKinney meant we got to work with The Marmalade and with their high speed robot “Spike”. They have their own software, which looks like Nuke / Flame but for controlling cameras and EFX gear. So everything in the spot is shot! A perfectly orchestrated camera moves through paint, which was a ton of fun! Their tech and our creative brought the work to a whole new level!
Evan Schoonmaker, Lead Compositor: From conception you could see that this spot was meant to push boundaries, both technically and artistically. This was a great opportunity to work alongside a group we’ve had our eye on for some time; The Marmalade and Effective Team. This was the Marmalade’s first production at their beautiful new studio, and this was our first time doing flame on set.
Testing with the Marmalade and using the Phantom for even the initial rounds allowed us to walk into the prelight with a working test edit. Having Flame on set meant that as we shot I could give real-time feedback from compositing all the way back to camera without slowing production. It allowed us to avoid potentially steppy time-warps by increasing camera speed or decreasing frame rate. I was also able to illustrate to Eben, McKinney and Sherwin-Williams the potential quality of different shot elements so we could more quickly move on to new shots. The speed of the workflow, from camera to dit to Flame to Eben was a game changer. In the end we were able to make up time to shoot different color combinations to create a unique second spot.
By the time we got to post we all knew we had something special. Me, Mario Caserta, and John Boudin pushed each shot to be its best. Alexis Jo and Sang Lee helped with some very difficult roto, tracking and stabilizing. The only CG in the spot is the product! The opening shots are actually very macro, but aesthetically we were going for a bright white version of outer space, like colossal comets colliding. Then the second section references natural valley landscapes as its motivation, airy clouds, weighty structures, followed by the feeling of riding up and through a rich vortex to the product.
We had a great working relationship with the team at McKinney. They came to our office in NYC a couple of times, even braving a city closing blizzard to push this project forward. It was a great feeling to have a collective vision for the spot but to also have the freedom to run with creative ideas and the trust of the agency and client that the work we were doing was all going toward a more vivid and beautiful product. I look forward to working with this team again.