a person holding up a tv remote and looking ahead intently. there are dinosaurs in the background walking to the left

The Collector - Mo’s Best Bud

The second installment of Sky’s Collector campaign features Mo, another “collector” who sets off on his dirt bike to capture his Sky content including a Formula 1 car and a dinosaur from Jurassic World. Framestore once again conjures the signature Sky portal, helping on his quest.

Concept Design
On Set Vis
Animation
Environments
Effects Simulation
Previsualisation Supervisor
Animation Supervisor
Visual Effects Supervisor
back shot of a person watching television

For the Jurassic World sequence, the team was tasked with turning the live action location of Missenden Valley in Buckinghamshire into Gyrosphere Valley. The team did this with a number of digital matte paintings, using references from the film and photography of real-life locations like those found in Hawaii as a basis for Isla Nublar before compositing the island’s resident Dinosaurs into the final frames. 

Talking about this sequence, Chris Redding said ‘The main thrust of our work was transforming a pristine English countryside into something much more rugged and exotic. We actually ended up replacing more and more in the live action plates than we’d planned and adding in more CG.

a person in a helmet sitting on a motorcycle while holding up a tv remote. they are on a formula one race car track
an animated disco ball coming out of a portal on a stage. there is bbc iplayer, stricly come dancing branding on the bottom left

The team had more VFX-driven heavy-lifting to do for Mo’s Best Bud than in Harris and the Robots, not least as they replaced live action reference vehicles with digital Formula 1 cars that are seen racing around Silverstone. With the shoot taking place on a non-race day at Silverstone, CG crowds were added to the stands, along with mingling bystanders beside the track, and the plethora of other trackside vehicles, tents and structures that are an essential part of the texture of an F1 weekend. 

‘We needed to make the F1 sequence quite intimate,’ commented Beau Garcia. ‘Everything we added had to place the viewer right in amongst the action and communicate the visceral nature of those shots which was a very fun challenge.’

Then throughout all the other vignettes that make up the film, it was Framestore’s job to not only to place the portal in the scenes, but also sell its power to the audience. The team did this with a number of CG assets that had to be created and added to the scenes as they’re whipped into the portal throughout. These Included a flurry of 50 Euro notes and one of the iconic Dali masks featured in the show in the Netflix/Money Heist sequence and CG facsimiles of the winning paintings from Portrait Artist of the Year.

Credits

Creative Agency
Sky Creative Agency
ECD
Robin Garton
CD
Aaron Willmer
Agency Producer
Ciaran Bennett
Production Company
Biscuit Filmworks
Director
Dan DiFelice
Producer
Kwok Yau
MD / EP
Rupert Reynolds-Maclean
Production Designer
Pablo Tregebov
Production Managers
Mike Carr & Sol Jonas Mackinlay
Sound
String and Tins
DOP
Kaname Onoyama
Editor
Paul Hardcastle at Trim
VFX & Colour
Framestore
VFX Supervisor
Chris Redding
CG Supervisor
Beau Garcia
Asset Lead
Aaron Hunwick
Modelling
Tim Gregson, Bruno Reis Coimbra
Texturing
Marnie Pitts, Florence Green, Justine Lecat
Look-dev
Caspian Grace Da Silva, Luca Veronese
Rigging
Ewa Zych
Senior Show TD
Philip Child
FX Artists
Daniel Warder, Niall Horn, Yan Weitlauff
Lighting
Caspian Grace Da Silva, Luca Veronese
Comp
Ben Taylor
Compositors
Simon Stoney, Julia Caram, Matthew Thomas, Javad Matoorian Pour, George Palcut, Michael Baker
DMP
Stefan Bernscherer
Heiro Editorial
Richard Gao
VFX Producer
Emma Cook
Production Coordinator
Ciara Roche
Line Producer
Hannah Critchley
Production Assistants
Katie Sharpe, Chloe Dunn
IP VFX
ILM
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