Staropramen Ghost

Even at the tender stage, we was inspirated by idea of Staropramen advert with a ghost and plunged into the project with his head. We wanted to make really organical CG, so there wasn’t the impression that the movie is made for the ghost. Ghost was conceived as a character, playing in a frame on a par with other actors.

We began to study the nature of ghosts, inflaming an already strong interest in the project. From all the hypotheses of appearance of ghosts, one was amusing: the space surrounding us has a memory, and in order to capture events in the past, need a camera with a filter that allows you to capture images outside the visible range of light waves. We searched video on youtube for keywords, and we found the events of the Second World frozen as in a museum, or reconditioned place of the theft. Everything that we need, as it turned out, we have. While the guys were fixed camera on a tripod directly in the office, and tie a special filter to, work on the Treatment was continued …

During the existence of cinema, screens was visited a great many of ghosts.
At a time when the frames glued on the montage table, the effect of the ghost is solved by the makeup, lights and a double exposure, or with the projection glass, which is very close to the nature of the phenomenon of ghosts.

What can we do in our time, when the means used by Filmmakers eighties, now available students in photoshop? In our technology, we have focused on ease of shooting, so as not to burden the director with shooting the layers. Because when the shooting stage turning into a layer-shooting of details, it’s needed more concentration and time when merging the layers into the frame, so it becomed holistic in terms of game actors and frame compositions.

So in summary:
1. On the platform we will see our ghost.
2. Not a single frame is not held under the slogan – then we will add this on the post and make all as we needed.
3. The actors play in the frame with a ghost.
4. Each frame is compositionally built on the stage with director of photography.
5. Ghost has the ability to take things.
6. You do not have to do necessarily a static camera.
7. Shooting process become shorter because we have a minimum of technical layers

The method which we choose, was easy, like all the decent existence. We just need to shoot two actors in the frame as is, without training, without blue screen and blue suits with markers. Which the advantages over the classical method of double exposure and projection glass? Frames become holistic and the director can see what is happening on the stage, no combinations in the future. Foreclose options, when in the right takes one actor looks into the wrong side, reduced number of takes, reduced the time of shooting. How all was filmed, have seen those who were on the stage. In future articles we will explain what the elementary ruse we used …

Frames become holistic and the director can see what is happening on the stage, no combinations in the future.

The real work was begun for us after the montage has been approved. By defining key frames, we have chosen two illustrative sizes, based on which began to make visual experiments. We varied the density, color, sense of materiality, added impurities, fog, haze, smoke. Survived just the six versions. In which ghost was not very CG, and harmoniously fit into the frame, without conflicting with the time in which events are played out. Of the six survivors at the first presentation was included only 3 of the best in our view versions. After the presentation, was left just two version for finalization. And soon, not difficult to guess, there is just one version of ghost, in which we made all the scenes. With a little excitement and pride for our work we have begun to impose order on the montage line for the upcoming presentation.

When the camera was removed – it stood in the office to “hunting for ghosts” all the time that we was working on the commercial, we were surprised to find in it new pictures. In which we had see a white cloud, resembling a huge octopus that flied from the montage room. It turned out that the place where our office is located, long long times ago grew a huge tree of 5-6 meters in diameter. The two-month exposure, and handmade, specially manufactured at the optical factory filter, allowed to capture the information remains in the space of many hundreds of years ago. It’s just wow!