User Profiles

Matt Silverman
Phoenix Editorial & Designs

Watch the commercial here:
http://www.phoenixedit.com/spots/html/gfx/sprite_lebron.html

Tell me about Phoenix Editorial & Designs
Simply put we specialize in all aspects of post-production including creative editing and motion graphic design, visual effects, and online editing. San Francisco’s most creative ad agencies including Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Publicis & Hal Riney, Venables Bell & Partners, Heat (formerly Black Rocket), and Duncan Channon have turned to us for our skill in story-telling that makes a commercial memorable.

Our clients see us as a new generation of talent-driven post houses that combine the dynamics of a small creative shop with infrastructure and expertise to complete technically challenging spots and videos in High-Definition TV.

For how long have you been using Damage?
When I started using After Effects twelve years ago, there were not many plug-in vendors so we used whatever we could get. Digieffects was one of these early pioneers, and I was quick to jump on each set that they released. I have been using Delirium since the product shipped, nearly a decade ago. Damage takes some of the best concepts from Delirium and packages them up in a plugin that really helps destroy footage.

What was your latest project using Damage?
The agency, AKQA, was creating an internet tie-in to the TV spots which were debuting in the NBA All Star Game. We developed a Lebron James Sprite video for the sprite.com homepage. The idea was that people would buy a bottle of Sprite and under the cap would be a number which consumers could use to access a virtual mixing board on the website. Consumers could then re-mix Lebron's tracks, and the winning track would then be used on the TV spot. The homepage played the video which explained how the process worked.

What Digieffects filters did you use on the spot? 
Our direction from the agency was to create a "holographic Princess Leah" look. Since AKQA wanted a holographic look against black, we needed to change the look from Princess Leah to something else, since the Star Wars holographic look utilized transparency which would not work against black.

We started with DVCProHD source footage shot against greensceeen, and keyed the shots in After Effects using Red Giant Software Primatte Keyer and Key Correct. We then shifted channels to create a hi-contrast grayscale version of the isolated Lebron James. Next we tinted the mid-tones to green.

We used a stock video clip that we have in our library to get the initial scan-line look. We created this scanline look using the Damage Interference effect for a Yahoo TV spot. At the time, we pre-rendered a grayscale scanline effect into a ten second QuickTime (since rendering was very slow in 1999) and have used this element on numerous projects since. We then applied this pre-render with a transfer mode to get the initial scanline look, and added a slight flicker through a wiggle expression.

Since Lebron is a basketball player not an actor, our editor spent a good amount of time editing the dialog together. This meant a lot of jump cuts to extend gaps in Lebron’s voiceover as well as jumpcuts from closeups to extreme closeups. We used After Effects’ Wave Warp filter along with the Damage Skew effect as a utilitarian tool to cover up these jump cuts, while at the same time adding an interesting addition to the holographic look.

What do you like most about Digieffects tools?
Digieffects plug-ins solve complex visual problems with simple to use plug-ins. Like the majority of "old school" plug-ins, some might say that they create "canned effects." This is not a bad thing. When you need an old film look or video interference, Digieffects plug-ins allow you to quickly set up a killer look. But as you can see from the Sprite job, in the right artistic hands these canned effects in combination with other plug-ins can produce amazing results which do not seem "canned" at all.

Would you recommend Damage to a friend or colleague?
Definitely, you get a lot of handy plug-ins in one set