Outpost Creates Action-Packed Blockbuster VFX for Panasonic Brand Film

Outpost has worked on Panasonic’s new brand film, ‘Hollywood To Your Home’, with Great Guns and Brave. Helmed by Tomb Raider director Roar Uthaug with cinematography by Ben Davis (Director of Photography on Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Marvel and Dumbo), the commercial features exhilarating car chases, breathtaking action sequences and spectacular explosions.

Styled like a trailer for a Hollywood action blockbuster, the 90-second spot brought some of the best creatives in the world together to show off the full capabilities of Panasonic’s newest range of TVs.

“This was a project that had a huge variety of VFX all squeezed in to a bitesize Hollywood action blockbuster, including procedurally generated foliage, full CG environments and, most challenging of all three, highly detailed FX simulations of a shattering window while our hero leaps to safety – all shot on a Phantom with a 4K delivery!” says Outpost VFX producer Josh Sykes. “Teaming up with Great Guns, Brave, and Tomb Raider director Roar Uthaug was a lot of fun and we're looking forward to working together again soon.” 

“It was hugely ambitious commercial as well,” says Outpost VFX supervisor, Cale Pugh. “It was car chases through the middle of Warsaw, the hero [played by Shaun Sipos] abseiling down a factory and smashing through a window, as well as explosions and gunfire.”

The film was shot on Phantom and Panasonic VariCam cameras at 1,000 frames a second, so the team really had to pay special care and close attention to the effects on show. This was most evident when the hero jumps through a glass window.

“All of those shots were about the tiny details: the splintering of the wood and the glass, for example.” Cale explains. “We had to make sure all of the Houdini simulations were absolutely perfect.”

Another standout component of the film was the realistic procedural foliage, overgrown all over the factory.

“The foliage effects are completely invisible!” says Cale, “the art department put a lot of foliage up and we added to it, augmenting what was already there so we had great references.

“When you watch that sequence, you can’t tell what is from the art department and what we had made in CG. It doesn’t even look like we added anything on there. It was all about adding to what the art department was doing, and not to detract from it.”