Zoic's Beautiful Diversion for Falling Skies

Culver City/Vancouver-based visual effects house Zoic Studios unleashes the ghastly creatures from TNT’s sci-fi series “Falling Skies” onto an unsuspecting contact lens model in the sneaky :30 teaser “Clear Gaze” out of Grey, NY as a promo for the June 9th Season 3 premiere. Packaged as a classic beauty spot for a contact lens brand, viewers are drawn into the jovial tone before being jolted down a path of horror as the woman featured begins to bleed from the eye and has her body invaded by a seething, crawly bug.  Zoic also handles the inventive VFX in the series, for which they’ve been nominated for an Emmy®. “Clear Gaze” debuted during the 2013 NBA Finals.    

 

Notes director Loni Peristere, “I love slight of hand. Eric Segal and the Grey team tee’d up a perfect ad. The approach invites audiences into a common commercial, giving them something they’d expect in every way, and then hit them in the face right in the middle of it with the opposite. The piece works because of the unexpected and photo real integration of the bug. No one likes anything in their eye!”

“Clear Gaze” opens on a cheerfully bespectacled young woman gazing at her reflection in a bright bathroom. She removes her glasses and begins to lift a contact lens to her eye as we see the logo and super, “Clear Gaze Breathable Daily Lenses.” We cut back to the effervescent woman, who now appears to be having difficulty with her newly inserted lens. Blood begins to drip into the sink as she begins to blink rapidly and horrifically gaze at her bloodstained reflection. She pushes back with terror as tiny bugs begin crawling out from her eye. The focus blurs for a moment before the stunned woman crumples to the ground, eyes open in a dumbfounded gaze as the bug continues to scatter on her face. As we cut to a shot of the woman on the floor from behind her dropped glasses, her horrified expression morphs into a smug grin. The screen is taken over by the Falling Skies logo, followed by the TNT logo and Twitter hashtag #ALIENS.

The spot was collaboration between Zoic’s Culver City and Vancouver, B.C. studios, both of which also contribute work to the visual effects on the series. Additional upcoming work out of the commercial division includes an AT&T campaign slated to launch later this month.

Credits

Client: Turner Entertainment Network/Falling Skies
Title: “Clear Gaze” :30
Agency: Grey New York
Executive Creative Director: Eric Segal
Creative director: Hema Patel
SVP/Account Director: Brett Banker
VP/Agency Producer: Diana Gay
Account Creative Director: Zack Menna
Account Creative Director: Richard Singer
Account Supervisor: Peter Loftus
Account Executive: Marissa Amendolia
 

Production Company: Bandito Brothers
Director: Loni Peristere
Executive Producer: Suzanne Hargrove
Producer: Karen Rohrbacher
Director of Photography: Vincent Laforet
 

VFX: Zoic Studios
Executive Creative Director: Chris Jones
Executive Producer: Ian Unterreiner
Executive Producer: Cally Morton
Senior VFX Producer: Jennie Burnett
VFX Producer: Steve Melchoirre
VFX Supervisor: Sallyanne Massamini
Lead Flame: Rob Moggach
CG Supervisor: Michael Cliett
Lead Animator: Scott Fritts
 

Editorial: Zoic Studios
Executive Producer: Cally Morton
Senior Producer: Jennie Burnett
Editor: Dmitri Gueer
 

Mix Company: Heard City

Executive Producer: Gloria Pitagorsky
Producer: Sasha Awn
Sound Designer: Cory Melious