VFX BREAKDOWN: COOP Naturaplan – “Franky”

In this Q&A with Jan Tvilling, VFX Supervisor at BaconX, we go through the team’s work in this tender commercial directed by Martin Werner and produced by Pumpkin Film, that won the Gold for Best Visual Effects at CICLOPE Festival 2021. And further below you can find the film’s breakdown!

How was the creative process between the VFX team and the director?

At BaconX, we have a very close relationship to the director, Martin Werner. Some of us have been happily involved in many hundreds of his projects throughout the last 15- 20 years of his career. So we have gained a lot of mutual trust and an unique insight in what Martin wants to achieve. Combined with our workflow, where we always strive to be involved at a very early stage, this allows us to work very unrestrained and very efficiently, because we know that, what we set out to do, will also work for Martin. This saves a lot of time, because we don’t have to “feel our way” with things, but can pretty much, jump right at it.

How did this relationship with Martin Werner work in this particular project?

At first we went through hours of footage with baby pigs of all sorts, to learn more about pigs personalities, how they move and what they are capable of. We edited mood films with the most relevant and inspiring moments of pet pigs in peoples homes, and wild pigs in their natural environment. In parallel, we had talks with Martin, who was still writing the script. The shooting board grew out of that process. After shooting and editing, which we also took part in, we started animating and integrating the pig to the footage. Because of Martin’s trust in us, BaconX acted as co-directors and handled most of the creative process with the agency and clients, with Martin Werner in the daily loop, and on milestone meetings up until the final presentation.

Did you encounter any technical challenges while working on the project?

This film was quite conventional in technological terms, so technically we didn’t meet unexpected challenges. Fur is always tricky, but we did many animals before, so that part went relatively smoothly. Our biggest challenge was actually the length of the film. We had so many ideas for fun and cute situations that couldn’t fit in the 45 seconds. Even the shots we did end up doing, have gone through numerous tweaks in length, in order to squeeze as much emotion and action as possible into each frame.

What is your favorite sequence in the commercial?

I think everybody’s favorite shot is when Franky meets the cow. It’s a cute and beautiful moment. Technically and creatively everything is executed flawlessly. In particular the animation which is spot on in showing Frankies strong curiosity, while he is still naturally alert while approaching the cow.

FULL CREDITS
COOP – “FRANKY”

COOP
Vanessa Finzer, Luca Schwarz, Christof Braun

Jung von Matt/Limmat
Dominique Magnusson, Michel Kissling, Sarina Pruschy
Agency Producing: Constantine Wrage

Pumpkin Film AG
Stefanie Brand (Executive Producer): Bacon X Kopenhagen (Postproduktion): Jan Tvilling, Arthur Dalvig, Supervision, Steffi Beck (Koordination), HitMill AG (Musik): Noemi Matthis (Organisation), Fred Herrmann (Komponist); Regie: Martin Werner; DoP: Jan Mettler (pd/wid)
Production: Pumpkin Film AG
Director: Martin Werner
DoP: Jan Mettler
Executive Producer: Stefanie Brand
Editor: Rasmus Nyholm Schmidt
Postproduction Producer Pumpkin Film: Claudia Brand
Postproduction CGI: BaconX
Creative Director BaconX: Jan Tvilling
VFX Producer BaconX: Steffi Beck
Colorist BaconX: Lasse Selvli
Music composer/Soundmix: HitMill
Postproduction Versioning: Südlich-t

BaconX
VFX supervisors: Jan Tvilling, Jonas Drehn
COO: Eliana Carranza-Pitcher
AD: Ditte Ludvigsen
CG Lead: Thomas Haas Christensen
2D Lead: Mario Maruska
Animation: Anders Brogård
CG artist: Arthur Dalvig
CG artist: David Ryberg Lessel
Animation: Gabi Popov
CG artist: Kim Fersling
CG artist: Rickard Didriksson
Animation: Simon Sonnichsen
Compositor: Thomas Banner
Compositor: Kai Hauswirth
Production Coordinator: Emilie Lausch
Colourist: Lasse Selvli
Conform: Søren Knudsen,
Conform: Mads Krogh Rosairus