NEW YORK, March 09, 2010, --- Characterized by many in the advertising industry as the Super Bowl for women, the Academy Award telecast carried a message of importance to the female market, taking the form of a spot which at first appears to be a stylish, high glamour, atmospheric ride extolling the virtues of a perfume or similarly "indispensable" cosmetic or piece of fashion apparel.
     Titled "Perfume," the ad features a young woman following a trail of magical, drifting points of light through a mansion. The light trail leads her to a crystal perfume bottle, at first obscured but then appearing clearly with the words "Cervical Cancer" written across it.
A voiceover relates, "Maybe it's unfair to get your attention this way, but nothing is fair about cervical cancer. Every forty-seven minutes, a woman in the U.S. is diagnosed."
     An end tag carries contact info, including a website address, HelpPreventCervicalCancer.com. The website was funded and developed by pharmaceuticals company GlaxoSmithKline.
     Visual effects house TANQ and its creative director Alex Catchpoole teamed with director Matthäus Bussman of Sandwick on the spot for McCann HumanCare, New York. The DP was Danny Hiele.
     The McCann team was headed by sr. VPs/group creative directors Doug Welch and BJ Kaplan. Catchpoole, Welch and Kaplan have been long-time collaborators.
     TANQ's involvement began in preproduction, and continued through each stage of production and post to final delivery of the HD master.  TANQ designed, animated and composited the light effects featured in the spot, and also did cleanup, rig removal and beauty retouching. The spot was edited by Mark Nickelsburg of Homestead and finished in HD.
     Catchpoole explained the design approach and his desire to make the effects feel physically present in the shots: "I wanted the sparkles to surround the model in a very sensual and beautiful way, and knew that simple 2D overlays weren't going to work.  The camera would be constantly on the move, and I felt that the light effect really should be part of the scene, part of the photography."
     That meant building and animating the sparkles in 3D and match moving the camera for each shot.  Camera data and lens information was collected during the shoot, with particular attention to depth of field.  "The sparkles," continued Catchpoole, "were designed to fill the frame and I planned to use the focal depth of each shot as a design element, since points of light look so beautiful moving in and out of focus."  The camera's depth of field for each shot was then reproduced in Flame and applied to the sparkles. Multiple 3D layers were rendered to create the glittering multifaceted look of the particles, and then combined and manipulated in Flame to arrive at the final look.
     During the shoot TANQ also worked with director Bussman and DP Hiele to ensure that the location and model were lit in a way that would complement the effect. "The effect adds light to the scenes, so it was important for the location to be under-lit so that the digital lights wouldn't be washed out by too much practical lighting," said Catchpoole. "We also talked about the light that the sparkles would cast onto the model and the walls, and how we could achieve that practically in each shot."