Dramatic Animation from Loco

Loco co-created, with the Film 4 team, their latest promo for the Tightly Wound season of thrillers. The teaser features a steel cable twisting and pulled to breaking point, inter-cut with such film clips as The Godfather, Double Jeopardy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and LA Confidential. The sound design helps ratchet up the tension as the cable begins to snap and the movie scenes grow ever more intense.

 

With a tight turnaround time and a desire to allow flexibility over the camera angles and look of the cables snapping, the team decided to take a CGI approach rather than a live action, high-speed camera shoot. Loco’s 3D team researched industrial and cinematic representations of high-tension cables pulling and snapping in order to build and rig the photorealistic model of a 49-strand steel cable. They were then able to animate the breaks within the steel wire rope to maximise the drama of the CGI scenes.

 

Loco’s Creative Director/ VFX Supervisor, Dan Coster worked closely with Film4 Director, Simone Cooke to determine the look and feel of the animation and select camera positions and movements that would focus on the stress points as well as travel along with the play of light across the wire’s surface. Loco’s Tony Lee enhanced the piece in the final composite by adding environmental atmos, dust particles, and additional camera shakes.

 

View here: http://bit.ly/LVdglL

 

Credits:

Title: Tightly Wound

Client: Film 4

Producer: Shizuka Hata

Director: Simon Cooke

VFX Supervisor/Director: Dan Coster

3D: Paul Evans, Simon Hegarty, Aaron Hegarty

Compositor: Tony Lee