DirecTV 'Hannah and Her Horse'

A Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, an idyllic Caribbean beach setting and a dry, witty talking horse - advertising doesn't get much better than this! Framestore’s New York team partnered with Grey NY and Tom Kuntz of MJZ to bring DirecTV’s hilarious new spots to life. The challenge of creating the charismatic co-star for the campaign was the brief for the Framestore team, who are well known for their award winning animated characters. "These projects aren't about moving mouths in time with the VO, it's about bringing a character to life." reflects David Hulin the VFX Supervisor, "Other studios can create seamless VFX but we understand how to direct animated performance and help bring more to the comedy. This campaign shows off exactly what clients come to Framestore for." “The biggest challenge was to perfectly match the CG renders of the horse to the real one, so when inter-cutting to non CG shots the edit would look seamless. This was achieved mainly due to the capability of our outstanding lighting team and very detailed compositing.” explained Compositing Supervisor Martin Lazaro. Paint and Roto artists were also on hand to remove any overlapping shots of the real horse and its CG counterpart which created a smooth transition between the two that would not distract the viewer. The horse’s facial movements were created using Framestore’s custom-built muscle and skin-slide systems, with the Film department’s Fur Technology then layered on top to create a photoreal impression of the horse. Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords fame supplied the voice, with the team taking care to match mouth movements with the delivered performance.