Shop Like a Billionaire
To introduce Super Bowl LVII audiences to online marketplace Temu, Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles and director Robert Jitzmark worked with Framestore to blur the lines between in-camera and digital VFX. With this practical approach in mind, a combination of VFX, compositing and design brought this fun and quirky spot to life.
To emphasize the amazing prices at Temu, magical VFX elements such as a glow and ripple effect created in Nuke and After Effects were added to phones and mirrors featured in various scenes, while Nuke screen replacements ensured the clearest and most up-to-date imagery.
Digital Matte Painting was utilized to build a bay window in the dance scene and to create the illusion of being inside a box at the Temu factory. Capturing the scene required close collaboration with choreography, first shooting actors in different passes wearing their fabulous shoes, then plates were combined and composited to edit out the dancers so that the focus remained solely on the products.
Flying wigs were captured in camera with minimal cleanup necessary, while an animatronic Woodpecker was shot in-camera and adjusted for believability with VFX grounding its feet to the actor’s shoulder.
Finally, a crowd scene in Mexico City was shot on location and required more blue screen work in tandem with Framestore’s proprietary 2.5D crowd system, allowing the team to fully populate an empty plaza with a crowd of photoreal people very quickly.
The design team rounded out the spot by echoing the same ripple effects featured throughout the film on the logo itself.
A final color grade was completed by colorist Tim Masick of Company 3.