How the Royal Ontario Museum Celebrated the Grace and Unpredictability of Wild Cats

Marty> The ROM is such an amazing client because oftentimes, our task is to sell curiosity. So, our brief for this exhibition was to get families excited by teasing how little most of us actually know about wild cats.

Mike> We had a bunch of fun ideas that we were playing with, but ultimately the story of this ball of yarn travelling through history won out.

Alon> The original script called for some more picturesque tableau moments that felt reverential to wild cats through history, in a kind of ethereal way. However, as we chatted about the script, it was clear that both Marty and Mike were looking for ways to not make the film feel more polished, with more of a focus on ‘mystery’. 

Alon> The storyboarding process was wonderful! I worked with long time collaborator, illustrator Gavin McCarthy. Usually I would create a detailed 3D previs that would go along the storyboards, however, given the unpredictable nature of working with live animals, and the rather loose shooting style I was aiming for with this spot, I decided against the previs. Instead, we relied on the storyboards to flesh out the different vignettes. I couldn’t be 100% confident that we could get some of the cats to pose or behave in the same way they were storyboarded, but it was still very useful to have a distinct game-plan going into the shoot. 

Creatively, my initial thoughts were how can we create a kind of ode to cats in a way that felt current, while also keeping with the overarching theme that cats are interwoven with human culture throughout history. There were no agency storyboards, so I felt inspired to approach everything visually through the lens of how I personally view wild cats – which is to say they are both majestic and feral. So, the entire spot kind of took that point of view. Elegant and minimal set design, beautiful lighting, slick VFX, but shot in a mysterious and atmospheric manner, and presented with a ferocious, frantic pace with wild handheld movement, and unpredictable moments. 

We then used the physical unravelling thread from a red ball of yarn to connect these scenes together, which was very much part of the initial scripted idea. The original script called for us to bookend the spot with an epic tableau of wild cats all lunging at a single ball of yarn in slow motion. This was an awesome idea, but I ultimately felt like the cost of doing this in a photoreal manner would compromise other scenes. Instead, I had suggested to bookend the spot in a more stark theatrical manner, using a spotlight of an impossibly small and cute house cat next to a ball of yarn half its size. We would then end the film with that same fluffy cat, but in front of a giant projection of a lion. This idea was well received by the team at BHLA, but it was seeing it storyboarded that really sold the client.

Marty> We had lots of thoughts, and Alon had lots of thoughts. In seriousness, Alon was such a great partner on this spot. Not just because of his visual eye and his ability to seamlessly integrate VFX and live action, but also because he was psyched. He had so much passion for this from the very beginning, and it really shows in the finished product.

Mike> Ultimately, it became mostly a process of what animals are available and what special effects have the best coolness-to-cost ratio. In the end, the final edit features just three live cats, and then a number of cutaways using stock. We had a few other cats around which didn’t make the final cut.

Alon> Our EP, Emily Smillie at Drip Productions, was the first to suggest that we shoot some of our scenes on an LED volume/stage. This was initially an effort to broaden the environments beyond them taking place in a ‘black void’, and to add some scale and production value to some of the scenes. Not only was that true, but it also allowed us to showcase those archival shots in a way that felt more interesting than simply cutting to full screen stock footage.

From there, we connected with Immersion Room in Toronto where we shot all of our scenes. The studio there is quite large and allowed us to put up multiple sets at once so we could leapfrog from one to the other (while always preparing the next scene while we shoot the current one). 

One thing to note: the scene with the lynx walking across the dining table, the jungle backdrop for the jaguar scene, and the wrestling arena environment were all shot against the LED wall, with Immersion Room designing the background. For the latter, I wanted to be at a low angle, using a super wide lens in order to convey the epicness of that moment where the wrestler roars like a tiger. During our tech-scout, we realised that due to this low angle, we’d actually be filming towards the LED ceiling, but that there was a large visible gap between that LED ceiling and the back LED wall. So, the team at Immersion Room, our DP, Bryn McCashin, and his team collaborated on a genius solution. We designed a virtual arena with a dynamic crowd that would exist on the back wall, and then a separate arena ceiling that would be displayed on the ceiling. We then placed physical real lights along the bottom of the LED ceiling that acted as theatrical lamps that would flare at the lens and would effectively blend that gap. The virtual design team then placed a CG metal truss along the bottom of the ceiling LED screen ,which made it look like our real lights were hung on. The end result was a seamless backdrop of the upper half of a wrestling arena. Finally, our production designer, Dylan Juckes, collaborated with the team at Immersion so we could add matching practical AND virtual ring ropes, haze/atmosphere, flash-bulb type strobes, and confetti that would rain down. 

Ultimately, shooting on the virtual stage in this way was extremely liberating for me as a director. These are things that I wouldn’t be able to do as easily if I were to be shooting this on green-screen, or otherwise had to have moved to a unique location just for these few shots.

Alon> We shot for two days. The first day involved all our human, non-cat talent, and consisted of the cavemen scene with the fire, the tiger-masked wrestler scene, and the jungle scene. That day was extremely smooth and just a blast all around. I think the film gods figured they’d give us an amazing day one, to prepare us for the craziness that was coming with day two. 

Our second day started off great as we shot a few scenes with Sourdough, the adorable, tiny white cat that bookends the commercial. He required several handlers to get his attention, and get him to want to take interest in the ball of yarn. While challenging at first, he did deliver, and honestly you can’t get mad at a cat that cute. 

Later, we'd also fence off the virtual LED volume area, and Bryn got in the ‘cage’ alongside two animal handlers to shoot the scenes with Link the lynx, while I was just outside the fence with my director’s monitor. We needed to have minimal crew in the vicinity of the set for safety reasons. All of that said, Link seemed to be having a blast filming. He was jumping on and off our table, playing with the ball of yarn, and even pawing playfully at the lens when we wanted him to. It was such a fun little vibe that we could almost forget that he could gnaw our faces off if he wanted to!

Alon> Ah, thank you! The initial idea was for there to be a caveman who is seen illuminating some stone-age drawings of tigers on a cave wall, with them then coming alive and animating. However, the client didn’t feel strongly about it, and because I wanted to hook the viewer with something spectacular, it occurred to me that this would be a great opportunity to do something big and magical while still keeping the idea of the ball of yarn. What if one caveman tossed the ball at another caveman - over a bonfire - and suddenly a big sabretooth tiger emerged from the flames and tried to swat at the ball? Honestly, I was worried it might be too much for this client, as they were sensitive to not making the campaign feel too dark or scary, but they immediately loved it and saw the potential.

From there, I was fortunate to be able to lead the team at Reactiv (who we had already brought in to handle some of the bigger VFX moments) to help bring that tiger to life. We knew the tiger had to be created using 3D fire-simulation, but we also determined that the campfire itself would have to be done in CG (partly for consistency, and also because we weren’t allowed to light a real campfire in the studio). So, in post we had the team animate a sabre-tooth tiger in 3D. We then used that animation to drive a photorealistic Houdini fire simulation of the tiger as it leapt up and swatted at the ball of yarn. That detailed, high-resolution fire simulation was then rendered, tracked and composited back onto the live action plate. We also used some rotomation to create 3D geometry of the physical ball of yarn that is being tossed through the air, so that it could interact and move through the fiery paw of the tiger. If you look closely, you can even see the ball of yarn catching fire as it falls back down. I’m quite thrilled with how that whole scene turned out!

Alon> Because it is such a recurring element of the spot, I was adamant on wanting to keep it practical. So, I think we had five different-sized red balls of yarn on set that we would use for different scenes. It was a very straightforward approach of having someone on the art team be responsible for rolling the ball and making it unravel in different shots. 

For the cavemen scene, we probably tossed that ball around 25 times over the ‘fire’ until we got the perfect throw that worked compositionally and timing-wise. Mind you, the cats were a different story. While Sourdough couldn't care less about the ball, which was funny and sometimes frustrating, both the serval cat and the lynx loved the ball of yarn and wanted to play with it.

Marty> We edited with Calum Moore at Outsider, and the edit was basically there from the second we sat down. He really nailed it. We spent a few days messing around, but it was mostly minor adjustments to an already great cut.

Mike> Because it was done on the LED wall, a lot of the post was baked in. And from there, Wade at Alter Ego made it pop with an amazing transfer.

Marty> OSO has done the sound design and music for our last few ROM projects, and found a bunch of great options for us. We really loved the primal feel of this one, complete with some sort of animalesque shriek that fit right into the edit.

Marty> Definitely the ferocious jaguar poking its head through the dense jungle foliage… even if it’s actually a crew member wearing a mask while wedged between IKEA plants. But shhh, that’s part of the mystery of cats.

Alon> It’s hard to choose because each shot had its own creative and technical challenge, either from filming live animals, elaborate propping, or complex VFX. The fire tiger is probably my favourite moment, just because of how fierce and dynamic it turned out, and all the work that went into planning and executing. However, I also have such a soft spot for that shot of the jaguar’s eyes peering at us through the jungle foliage. Ahead of the shoot we had a wonderful prop designer work very hard to try and fabricate a realistic jaguar mask. But, because of the tight turnaround time, it felt like we’d require a lot of CG/post to try and make it feel authentic and real. With maybe two days ahead of our shoot, we lucked out in being able to acquire an alternative – a gorgeous headdress of a jaguar from a studio called Eastern Wind. Mikhail, our producer, ended up donning the headdress and acted as a jaguar roaming the jungle. I’m proud of how that shot looks because it feels so striking and life-like (and it almost didn’t).