What a Beautiful Day

The spot features a 2020-era, tracksuit pants from the waist down, beer-drinking hero embracing his morning routine and singing the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic “Oh What a Beautiful Morning,” before joining an endless monotony of Zoom work calls. As he leaves his apartment and gleefully peruses the neighborhood, he’s met with some less than endearing creatures that appear to be cheering him along the way. 

Enter Framestore’s teams across London, Chicago and LA, who seamlessly collaborated remotely during COVID lockdown to bring a variety of creepy, but sweet, animals to life. Integrating the pigeon, racoon, and squirrel featured in the spot required teams to extract puppeteered animatronics originally shot with their handlers. They were also given a little extra dirt and grime to remind the viewer that this was certainly no ordinary musical.

“Much of the compositing work involved extensive and difficult removal of rigs, wires and the puppeteers themselves who were bringing the animals to life,” said Ruairi Twohig, 2D Lead at Framestore’s Chicago studio. “The result is a unique look to the quirky creatures that can be challenging to capture with a CG approach. But the CG team did an amazing job introducing some of these subtle quirks to the texture and animation of the singing fawns in the epic final scene.” 

The final musical scene set to Parliament’s vista environment also features eleven adorable deer singing in harmony, which the Framestore team created entirely from CG to blend in with the quirkiness of the animatronics throughout the spot.

“It was amazing to see the dedication and collaboration of the global Framestore team as we were challenged to come up with creative solutions for the final reveal right up until delivery,” said Framestore VFX Supervisor, Jordan Carroll. “It is exciting and encouraging to take what we learned throughout this campaign and apply it to new projects as we continue to navigate the remote working world.” 

Final color grade by Framestore’s Beau Leon also brought this fresh musical number to life.