This film focuses on Molly and her fantastical and imaginative adventure that begins within her own backyard. Her journey starts when she discovers a tiny red ladybird on a blade of grass. She closes her eyes and makes a wish. Opening them the ladybird has magically transformed into much larger version of itself. With a sense of discovery and wonder she enters a world of information never before seen that focuses on the history and magic of flight. She sits herself on the ladybird and embarks on a journey that ends with her achieving her goal of one day flying a plane high in the sky.

FSM’s VFX Supervisor, Andreas Wanda, was engaged early in the project and worked closely with the Brilliant Films director, Henry Mason., overcoming the enormous challenges of integrating a photo real ladybird into this filmic spot. The ladybird needed to be real but placid as well as interact heavily with the live action talent. To help with this assimilation a portion of the ladybird was made called the pronotum (the neck) for Molly to sit on. With her harnessed to the prop the whole thing was then puppeteered to move like the ladybird in the previz. This made Molly’s body react as though she were really there. We’d made the decision to make the prop black like the bug rather than green to help avoid spill onto her which gave us the most realistic contact point lighting possible.

The spot was filmed with new anamorphic lenses. They distort the image quite heavily, particularly in the corners and are not pin sharp. In fact they soften the image more around the edges of the plate. This can be a challenge when tracking. The same distortion was applied to renders to add that extra layer of realism and integration.

Our lead designer, Darrin Hanley (Daz), spent a long time developing and finessing a look for the beautiful info graphics. We went through many iterations to try and find something that was original but also worked within the bright environment. It also needed to be presented in a way that wasn’t just your typical web browser view but rather something more advanced that more bandwidth could bring. The colour palette is subtle and ties to the NBN pneumonic.

The success of this project hinged on very open and collaborative discussions with everyone involved. It was a pleasure to work with BWM Dentsu and Brilliant Films.