MPC continues partnership with MJZ’s Matthijs van Heijningen, this time on ‘2117’, Jung von Matt’s brave Christmas film for German supermarket EDEKA

EDEKA’s new Christmas film ‘2117’, released online in Germany, is directed by MJZ’s Matthijs van Heijningen with concept and idea by Jung von Matt. The four-minute spot, which continues the brand's tradition of delivering brave Christmas advertising, is set in a very believable future in which robots have taken over. It follows the story of a lowly but courageous service robot who wants human love in his cold, barren world. Our hero is created by the team behind Samsung ‘Ostrich’ and ‘Buster the Boxer’ for John Lewis. It was important that the craft and emotional storytelling remained of the highest quality throughout the four-minute film.  

Watch the stunning new craft film:

The full ad:

Animation craft

To create this world and its inhabitants, MPC’s team adapted to the project’s challenges, evolving new ways of working to deal with the scale and complexity. Inspired by a classic film, EDKEKA’s robot is looking for a human connection - but he’s no alpha-male.

"I’m very proud to have helped realise Matthijs’ vision”, says Diarmid Harrison-Murray, MPC’s VFX Supervisor. "It pulls at the heart strings - just what you want and expect from a Christmas ad – but with a unique idea. As we follow our hero’s story, it’s the delicate nuances that make him engaging. Conveying subtle emotion in a robotic character is tricky. We were striving to set the dial right in each scene – tough in a film with over 80 CG shots.”

VFX detail

From concept art down to every nut and bolt, MPC’s VFX artists created the robots to reflect how they’d be built in their own world, taking inspiration from real-life, movable objects. Because our artists had to deal with so many individual pieces – over 3,000 mechanically-accurate parts for the hero robot alone – the team developed a new look-development workflow, to manage material assignments and shader variation. This way of working enabled the team to create the world of ‘2117' against a tight time-scale.