GE has launched “Two Letters”, a new advertising campaign in Australia designed to highlight the difference technology, innovation and imaginative thinking can make to Australia, particularly in transportation and business technologies, health care and clean energy. The ‘Two letters’ campaign will span TV, outdoor, print as well as online. The campaign line, ‘What a difference two letters can make’ is driven home in the commercial where the letters ‘G’ and ‘E’ swirl around a hospital to create “cutting edge health care solutions” before boosting businesses and flying to the country to create a wind mill. The campaign is online at imaginationatwork.com.au.
he campaign is made up four print and three TV advertisements which include the same amount of special effects as a modern full length feature film. The visuals featured in the campaign include:
- A GEnx jet engine – one of the most advanced jet engines in the world that delivers 20% more fuel efficiency to help customers reduce their carbon footprint. With their long history in jet engine technology, GE has developed a more advanced wind turbine that creates more watts from less wind to help power Australia with cleaner energy;
- A breakthrough pocket-sized ultrasound device called Vscan, which brings mobility to medical services allowing doctors to see inside the body wherever they are and improving access to advanced healthcare in remote and rural areas;
- A GE PET/CT scanner which combines two powerful medical imaging technologies to produce high-definition images that can help doctors detect and treat cancer in its early stages; and
- GE water purification plants off the Great Barrier Reef that purify more than 70 million litres of wastewater every day to help protect/preserve one of Australia‟s natural wonders.
Click on the image below to play the making-of documentary in YouTube
Credits
The Two Letters campaign was developed at Clemenger BBDO Sydney by executive creative directors Paul Nagy and Mike Spirkovski, creative team Chris Badger and Will Edwards, agency TV producers Jo Howlett and Rebekah Lawson, agency print producer Jo Kouvaris, account director Eva Chown, strategic planner Emma Burn, working with GE advertising and brand director Ted Felton, corporate communications director Joanne Woo.
Filming was shot by director Graeme Burfoot via The Feds with producer Jude Lengel. Photography was by Simon Harsent and Steve Wohlwender.
Visual effects were produced at Fuel VFX by VFX supervisor Anders Thonell, executive producer Celia Nicholas, producer Erica Ford, software designer Steve Oakley.
Fuel’s VFX Supervisor Anders Thonell worked closely with Burfoot, copywriter Will Edwards and art director Chris Badger in pre production to ensure the visual effects elements were designed to tell the GE brand story. “Graeme gave us a very detailed brief and sketched how he wanted the letters to move and form. This was really helpful for us because we knew from the outset that this campaign required careful design and planning to accompany the grunt of a big simulation job.”
Steve Oakley designed software which plugged into Maya to drive the constructing machines. The simulation effects used in this commercial were quite complex and required not only that the letters merge and form in a naturalistic way, but that the ‘G’ and ‘E’ letters struck the right stylistic balance including subtle messaging, colour and tone.
“The letters had to be controlled enough to lock together to form solid surfaces but also move freely enough to give a sense of floating on the wind which brings the machines together”, said Thonell. “Graeme wanted all the movement to be justified by some natural force, wind or page flip and not by a contrived magic.”
Fuel’s CG artists built replica models of the hero products CT scan, jet engine and wind turbines, animated them and placed them into the shots. Transparency ramps were used to indicate which parts of the machines were constructing at any time and what the flow of the animation would be, which Oakley used to drive his simulations.
Such is the detail of the animation that almost every shot has some hand-animated elements or unique treatment. “We’ve added character to the letters and multiple methods on almost every shot – key frame animation, particle and cloth simulations, proprietary simulations. This commercial has been a lot more hand-made than I anticipated, but it was necessary to get to that level of detail,” said Thonell.
Maxwell was chosen to render the spot due to the short depth of field that was used in-camera. Maxwell could offer features to enhance the depth of field, while being one of the few renderers that could handle the vast amount of geometry used to create this spot.