Samsung, Coliseum



MPC and CHI join forces on an epic Samsung 4K extravaganza starring a host of fearsome Gladiators

The ad was created to launch Samsung’s world first curved UHD television, with the commercial shot and delivered entirely in 4K and directed by Park Picture’s Nathan Price.

MPC’s VFX team, led by Franck Lambertz and Carsten Keller, extended the purpose built coliseum, replicated the braying crowd and created the wide shot completely in CG. MPC’s pioneering technology and engineering departments re-worked parts of the pipeline in order to work at three different resolutions and frame rates simultaneously: HD, Ultra HD 25P and Ultra HD 60P for which viewing devices are still in development. 

Franck said “4K is effectively 4 times regular HD, so this means working with a huge amount of data. As our current software wasn’t designed to work with the technology, we developed entire new toolsets and integrated them into our workflow. When viewing the spot on a 4K monitor the detail is absolutely mindblowing - even the most minute expressions on members of the crowd are amplified, and all the architecture - concrete and wood, and even the leaves on the trees are incredibly detailed. 4K is going to be standard in the future, and working closely with Nathan and CHI it was a rewarding challenge to be one of the pioneers in this field.”

The cinematic opening wide shot was developed from a series of concept drawings by MPC’s in-house team. Initially using matte painting, the scene was then built up in CG, incorporating intricate details. The crowd is a combination of in-camera plates, 3D crowds and additional detailed matte painting.

Following a detailed 3D pre-vis and concept drawings, the shoot took place in New Zealand where the production team built part of the coliseum.     

MPC’s 3D team then built the remainder of the structure using Nuke.

Director Nathan wanted as much of the action to be captured in-camera as possible, which required a huge cast and crew. MPC utilised proprietary crowd replication technology, ALICE to take the 200 extras and build up a crowd of over 10,000 in the wide shot. Close up crowd shots were shot as HD plates and built up into the scene.

Behind The Scenes

Gallery

Credits

Agency

CHI&Partners

Production Company

Park Pictures

Director

Nathan Price

Agency Producer

Matt Cresswell

Creatives

Micky Tudor & Monty Verdi

Executive Producer

Stephen Brierley

DoP

Ginny Loane

Producer

Claris Harvey

Editor (UK)

Paul Hardcastle @ Trim London

Editor (NZ)

Jonno Woodford Robinson @ Fusspot

Grade

MPC

Colourist

Jean-Clément Soret

VFX

MPC

VFX Producer

Philip Whalley

VFX Executive Producer

Tim Phillips

VFX Supervisor

Franck Lambertz

CG Supervisor

Carsten Keller

VFX Team

Tom Carrick, Tushar Kewlani, Yosuke Matsuo, Ben Perrot, Andrew Roberts, David Singer, Grant White, Toya Drechsler, Mark Robinson, Jama Djurabaev, Leanne Goymer, Eduardo Castells, Anbarasu Elangovan, Inigo Vimal Roy, Sumesh Chammancheri, D. Venkatesan, Dheeraj Hebbar, Elangovan Ganeshan, Ganesh Kumar S, Jai Suthan Tinakaran, Dileep Kumar Neerla, Samson Samuel, Anupam Kumar, K. Nikkesh, Vamsi Krishna Reddy, Akhil K. P, Ragesh Ramchandran & Shashi Kant Kamal