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Reader SurveyEffecting BMW Shorts
Jul 1, 2001 12:00 PM, Michael Goldman
Instead of turning to traditional commercials, BMW recently enlisted several A-level directors to create six-minute action films for playback via the Internet (www.bmwfilms.com).
The films, executive produced by David Fincher, are collectively titled, The Hire. Each film is a chapter in the ongoing adventures of a mysterious driver, played by British actor Clive Owen. Among the directors who have lent their talents to the project are John Frankenheimer, Ang Lee, Won Kar-Wai, Guy Ritchie, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
Although a feature-film sensibility has been applied to the project (each short has a budget over a million dollars), there was “obviously a smaller set of resources available for each shot,” says Andrew Hardaway, visual effects supervisor on the first two films (Frankenheimer's Ambush and Lee's Chosen) for Radium Visual Effects, San Francisco.
“Neither film was an effects film,” says Hardaway. “But because of both money and time limitations, each director made choices about which shots he wanted to capture in-camera, and which he wanted to create, or enhance, digitally in post. Frankenheimer and Lee wanted feature-level effects with less resources than they are used to, so some things they would normally film, we instead were asked to create or finish digitally.”
Hardaway says Ambush — shot by Frankenheimer's crew over just 10 evenings in Southern California — features 90 green-screen shots, while Chosen sports 50.
“Those are large numbers for six-minute films,” he says. “For Ambush, we had to create digital tire smoke and debris, gun muzzle flashes, bullet rounds striking pavement with sparks, digital shell casings, as well as enhancing an explosion with synthetic debris. That is something, for instance, Frankenheimer probably would have shot entirely in-camera if this were a full-length feature.”
