Warburtons Mission Crumbtrol

Our brief for the Warburtons TVC was to deliver a photo-real CG reconstruction of the NASA Mission Control room as it stood in 1969. We ran the environment through Chaos Arena inside a VP studio setup with the team at Quite Brilliant.

We were approached by regular partners Quite Brilliant to create a virtual set build for Warburtons: 150 Years in the Baking – for the vignette focussing on the 1960s, an accurate reconstruction of the Moon Landing ‘Mission Crumbtrol’ Room was required.

Working closely with the Production Designer and Art Department, we built virtual desks, workstations, walls and lighting that matched seamlessly with the practical set, and thanks to the speed and power of Chaos Arena, we were able to render real time reflections from the Viewing Gallery Windows, perfectly synced to live camera motion – something that is usually out of scope for Unreal Engine.

The success of the project was founded on treating the CGI build as pre-production, rather than post production. Creating the Virtual Set in parallel with the Practical Set meant that we were “oven ready” once the cameras started turning, with no lengthy delays in the studio ironing out kinks and rebaking lighting setups. A day of testing and pre-light was a crucial part of the process.

The smooth and efficient pipeline provided by Chaos Arena allowed us to share plans and modeling files with the Art Department, achieve a high level of realism in lighting and texturing, and most importantly our artists were able to work creatively on the set build right up until the last minute – even making adjustments to layout and colour grade in line with Director’s requirements during the shoot.

Credits:

Agency: Joyful & Triumphant
ECD: Billy Faithfull
Creatives: Kim Hutchinson, Joe Fitzgerald, Billy Faithfull
Design: Chris Willis, Alex Talikowski, Darren O’Donoghue
Project Director: Kirsty Ferris

Agency Producers

Sally Lipsius @ Lipsius Creative
Charlotte Lipsius @ Lipsius Creative

Production Company

Merman – UK – Director, Declan Lowney/Producer Simon Monhemius
Atlanta – The Artery VFX NYC/Producer Deborah Sullivan

DOP
Merman – Catherine Derry
The Artery – Bella Gonzales

Virtual Production: Quite Brilliant

Editor: Leo King @ Stitch

Recording Studio & engineer: Jungle

Engineer: Ben Leeves

Post Production: Freefolk

VFX: Andy Copping

Grade: Duncan Russell

Producer: Charles Gillet

Leland Music:

Composer Raphael Fimm

Producers Toby Wiliams & Dhamirah Coombes

Take My Breath Away – Berlin