The Meaning of Eggsistence was Directed by Bruce Ryder and Produced by Stephen Rennicks.

Alan Foley was The Element’s Flame Operator on this animation short. Alan chose a grade  to remove the raw look and he applied a slight film effect with a grain and colour correction in order to perfect the overall dark mood of the piece. Alan added some effects and clean up work and revised some cuts until the final look was achieved. Both Alan and the Director, Bruce Ryder, worked closely together to achieve a level of excellence on this short which Bruce Ryder expressed his complete satisfaction with.

The Element has also just completed working on the Fourth Series of “Room to Improve” for Coco Television. For this series, Diarmuid Kelly on-lined and graded this in Avid DS. Series Four is an exciting series which sees Architect Dermot Bannon back restructuring eight family homes.

Stay Tuned for upcoming projects that will start in The Element very soon.

Between the Canal Movie Still

The Element just recently finished working on ‘Between The Canals’ by Avalon Films for The Irish Film Board, a 75 minute feature film that had it’s world premiere at this years Jameson Dublin International Film Festival at the weekend. It was shot on RED One and onlined and graded by Diarmuid Kelly & Dan Moran at Element in Avid DS HD. As Post Production Technical Supervisor, Diarmuid found that Avid DS provided the most efficient and transparent RED workflow, working from a Final Cut Pro offline process, while also allowing grading tools to be applied to the original RED files.

Between the Canals Movie Still

For the colour grade,Dan Moran created a raw cinematic, high contrast and desaturated look to compliment life set in the heart of Dublin’s inner city.

Between the Canals Movie Still

Directed by Mark O’Connor it’s a tale of three small-time Dublin criminals each heading in three very different directions as they attempt to find a place for themselves and their families in a very different Dublin to the one they grew up in. Set against the backdrop of St Patrick’s Day Between the Canals is a touching portrait of three divergent reactions to the prospect of a life of crime in Dublin City.

‘A Clowns Requiem’ Directed by Jason Forde produced by Four Quadrant Films also featured in this years Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.

Other Projects in the pipeline at the Element are’Northern Ireland’s Greatest Haunts’ Series 2 &’Room to Improve Series’ 4 for Coco Television, and IFTA nominated ‘Welcome To My World’ Series 2 for Loosehorse.

“Beijing” Demo Commercial
Directed, produced, edited, 3D animated, composited and flamed by The Element

“Bank of Ireland-Decisions”
Irish International BBDO

“Bank of Ireland-First Time Buyers”
Irish International BBDO

“Speedo-Love Water” Demo Commercial
Directed by Colm Maguire
Russell Curran Productions

“The Star Football Journo - Eamon Dunphy, Ray Houghton, Pat Dolan”
Write Stuff Productions

“Beijing” Demo Commercial
Directed, produced, edited, 3D animated, composited and flamed by The Element

“Bank of Ireland-Decisions”
Irish International BBDO

“Bank of Ireland-First Time Buyers”
Irish International BBDO

“Speedo-Love Water” Demo Commercial
Directed by Colm Maguire
Russell Curran Productions

“The Star Football Journo - Eamon Dunphy, Ray Houghton, Pat Dolan”
Write Stuff Productions

Getting the Shot :

On an adventure down off the West of Ireland my trusty Canon 5d mk ii named “Clarence” and I popped off this shot while out on a boat trip around the Cliffs of Moher.

Before Shot

The shot was taken with flash to balance the ambient sky and amazing clouds and still manage to keep Dave properly exposed in the foreground. This contributed to the overall style of the photograph and subsequent painterly quality of the finished result. Another of the major factors was that this photo was taken in RAW, a Canon Camera digital format, which is similar to the digital negative of the RED camera and this format gives me great latitude for grading which is almost equal to 35mm film.

Post Production - Adobe Lightroom :

To start off I put a digital dark gradient filter on to dramatise the sky and allowed me to brighten up the rest of the photo while keeping the sky dark.

After Shot

I then pushed the mid-tones and shadows to really stylise the shot and especially to bring out the cliffs and recover the green that was lost in the original shot.

This however, caused some of the detail on his jacket and the writing on his camera to be too bright and blown out. To solve this I had to crush the blacks and add more contrast to the shot overall.

Due to the fact that I was shooting into the sun,even with the giant lens hood I was using, a lens flare had occurred near the pocket of his jacket. To remove this I simply cloned the flare out using the clone tool in Adobe Lightroom. To wrap it up I tweaked the individual colour saturation’s adding more green to the cliffs and tweaking the hue of the sky until it was just right.

To finish, I cropped the image to re-frame taking
away all the distractions to focus more on the individual
and his surroundings and ended up with this.

The rythmic pattern lulls the viewer like a lullaby into fantastical world where the serene embraces the vulnerable in a tantalizing enigma of a hidden secret.

Love water has an enriching and imaginative cinematic style that would lend itself comfortably to the big screen.

The Director Colum Maguire of Russell Curran Productions, has crafted a stunning piece of aesthetic work where fantasy meets reality and whose attention to detail has a surreal realitae.

The mix of naturalistic imagery and 3D graphics were created by Dublin f/x house The Element. There in-house designers and compositors have together with Colum created and visualized a stunning piece of artistic motion.

Here is how we did it………

Scene 1:

As this shot was the opening shot we wanted to create an impact to start off with. The background was a cloud plate photographed by the Director, Colum Maguire. Colum photographed various shots of cacti so we were able to mask these out and place them in the scene to create the illusion of a desert shot. In Maya a 3d old style roller coaster was created and comped in to create a point of interest within the shot. The sunrise was created with a Sapphire plug-in manipulated to give the effect of a real sunrise.

Similar to the first shot, we added in a ferris wheel which was created in Maya.

Scene 2:
We started with rocks and a sponge shot on RED on green screen. We needed to add in an additional source material to give the impression of a real beach. The director, Colum shot the sea on Mini DV and the children in the background were shot against green screen and comped in on the horizontal plain. The birds we see were created in Lightwave 3D. After all the shots were comped within Flame we added a grade to tie the whole scene together creating a very convincing live action shot.

In this scene the sponge was shot on RED close up. Using warp within the comp we warped the holes in the sponge to change into a heart shot and tracked the effect to the live action plate giving the impression of the sponge changing its surface.

Scene 3: car 1 car 2 car 3 car 4

Originally this car scene was shot on RED. Because the idea was for the car to be driving through a city scape in the rain we thought we would have more control within a 3D environment to create a wet car in a city. In Maya the car was built taking reference from the RED footage.

In Flame various elements such as lights, city and rain were comped into the 3D scene. The interesting part of this sequence was to create digital rain that hit off the windcreen. The rain was created in Photoshop and then animated to look like it was trickling downwards. This then went into a plugin to create an edge to the light and shade.

In Flame the windscreen was rotoscoped out to replace it with the rain texture to create a very real live action feel. A heavy grade was applied to tie the scenes together.

Scene 4 : The Pipes

This scene was created in XSI 3D software. Again after the pipes were originally shot on RED it seemed logical to create the entire scene in 3D as we needed more control over the camera move. Frogs were created in 3D to bring life to the scene. The elements were comped and graded within Flame to give a very dramatic feel to the shot.

Scene 5: The Rays

This shot was very interesting as we needed heart shaped stingrays. As we know they are not
easy to come by so in Maya the rays were built in the shapes of hearts and animated against a blue background. Because the animation of the rays worked so well it was just a matter of comping them into an environment that looked convincing. In Flame we created some light rays and sea textures with some coral and the end results leaves us in no doubt that we are swimming with the real rays.

Scene 6: The Watering Can

These shots were shot on RED as stills. In Photoshop we built in new backgrounds to give a summer feel to the scenes.

Scene 6 - The Watering Can

In Lightwave a projected scene was built using the Photoshop stills and a camera move was introduced with parallax to create a very real looking camera move with tracks. Particles were used to create the blowing blossoms.

Scene 6- The Watering Can

Scene 7 - The Eye

Scene 7: The Eye

This shot was graded in Flame and the pupil of the eye was manipulated to take the appearance of a heart shape.

Final Scenes - The Dive

The diver was shot on RED against green screen and where diving into the pool we took the blue in the water as our key source. In Maya various buildings were created for each shot in the sequence and the diver was comped into these 3D platforms using the master keyer in Flame.

Additional cacti were introduced and some heat haze filters used to create the illusion of a hot desert. The splashes within the scenes were comped from the real splashes within the pool. The Flame artist, Alan Foley and Maya artists’ Steve and James worked very closely together on each shot to achieve the end look.

You can view the finished ad by clicking here.

Dan Moran, a member of the online creative team here at The Element and a keen photographer in his free time, recently purchased the Canon and is fast becoming one of its biggest fans.

Over several “wandering around Dublin trips” and photo shoots, Dan ,armed with his camera, shot the above and below photos. These act as impressive examples of the Canon’s capabilities.
Stay tuned as we will upload video content and more pics from Dan.

The commercials were filmed on RED at 3K against green screen in Ardmore C-Stage over two days. The RED files were then processed back at The Element and offlined by Tony Kearns. Our graphics department headed by Stephen Bowen along with James Kenny designed numerous “painted” wall treatments, taking inspiration from contemporary artists as well as scripted references for the “First Time Buyers” spot. The vibrancy of the imagery and animation added life, lightness and fun to the overall commercial and captured the emotions and excitement of a future buyer.

Before and after shots of “First Time Buyers” Commercial:

In May this year, The Element embarked on its biggest project to date, a 30 second promo piece for the Beijing Olympics. Shot on the new red camera, the promo was directed, produced, edited, 3D animated, composited and flamed by The Element. This fast paced commercial piece shot in Greystones, shows a professional runner being chased by terrocota warriors across the Great Wall of China. With impressive 3D animation throughout, the commercial hopes to perform just as well at the upcoming Shark Awards in Kinsale this September.

Other commercial work includes The Galway Arts Festival advertisements, The Star AMEN, Nissan Double Take 2 and Nissan VRT for The Larkin Partnership, Kelloggs Passpost to Fun for Leo Burnett & Associates, Irish Independent Travel Guide for IIBBDO, GAA Road To Croke Park (Football and Hurling) for The Larkin Partnership, Sunday Business Post weekly commercials, Cash and Carry Kitchens for One Louder, Tegral Stings for Adept Creative, Mitchelstown Cheese ‘Cow Talk’ for Cawley Nea TBWA and VW Dog for Owens DDB. We are currently working on two commercials for IIBBDO on a campaign for The Irish Independent ‘Disneys Wonderful World of Knowledge Collection’ and a Bisto ‘100 Years’ commercial for Young Euro RSCG composed in Autodesk Flame.

Alongside our commercial work, 2008 has given us the opportunity to work with Coco Television on a number of high profile programmes for RTE 1 and 2. These include the 4 part series Living the Dream, the 8 part series Desperate Houses and the 6 part series House Hunters in the Sun Revisited. September will see the commencement of the offline of the series ‘Desperate Houses’ due to be completed and aired in the New Year. In 2008, The Element also continued its post production editing and graphics work on the Planet Rock Profile programmes. Profiling well known stars such as Kid Rock, Linkin Park, Plain White T’s, Nickelback and Westlife, these half hour programmes have been syndicated all over the world and are due to be aired on ITV later this year. Another highly acclaimed series for The Element was ‘The Ultimate Guide to Everything’ a 6 part series for Independent Pictures offlined and onlined in house. The Element are currently completing the 6 part series titled “How the Irish have Sex’ for Red Pepper Productions which presents a candid view of the Irish publics views on sex and relationships. As well as programmes, The Element has also completed an hour long documentary piece entitled Niall Tobin: Seo Man for New Decade which will be aired on TG4 this Autumn.

2008 also meant a number of corporate projects for The Element including a Fuji in-store DVD, SuperValu and Centra Customer Service DVD’s for Musgrave Retail Partners Ireland and a corporate piece for Accord, an Irish marriage counselling service.

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