(Re)Think Production with VFX

Recent months have brought up all-new challenges for brands, and as the situation continues to unfold we’ve never seen a better time to refocus advertising on delivering real value and reactivating customer obsession. “It’s the time to start thinking about the scenarios for how your business and your brand will live in a different world,” says Wesley ter Haar, MediaMonks Founder. Innovative production approaches have arisen throughout the world as many brands continue to “keep moving” – as the shift towards digital becomes increasingly inevitable, speaking to a time post-COVID-19 as well. 

VFX Transports Us to Another World

For MediaMonks, we’ve updated our traditional approach to shooting with new formats (including our new safe, sanitized shoot studio) but additionally, we’ve continued work via other established types of production that remain within local safety guidelines by the very nature of being digital. One such visual experience was created last year between our Mexico City and Amsterdam offices to bring to life an eight-meter high panther made of flint-like material, an entity made of smoke, among many other things, to recreate the Mayan underworld in “Xibalba” for Mexican beer brand Victoria Cerveza.

In “Xibalba,” we follow our protagonist on an emotional journey through the underworld, where he fights mythical beings in a fantastical setup for the chance to meet with his loved ones once again. This scenario demanded the creation of several visual elements that, to achieve their full effects, could only be done through VFX artistry.

From the get-go, one of the main challenges for the VFX team was to create all the visual elements in just ten days. “We needed to think of a way to work very efficiently without compromising quality, so we could stay ahead of the curve and do multiple reviews a day,” says Okke Voerman, VFX Lead at MediaMonks. “There were also shots with some heavy smoke simulations without the time to do a lot of iterations. By connecting our Houdini artist with one of our VFX compositors, we layered many renders to get the smoke that we wanted.”

But that was not the only challenge. The film, shot in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, home of the ancient Mayan civilization, was produced and edited in Mexico City, while the VFX treatment took place at the same time in Amsterdam. 

“Working from different offices around the world can be very challenging. To make it work, you need to look for the benefits it can bring and focus on those,” explains Voerman. “By having our VFX production team setup in Amsterdam and our client-facing producers in Mexico, we had more hours in one day than normal.” So instead of working just eight hours a day, we combined our work in different time zones to achieve an otherwise exhausting 16-hour workday. Our diverse teams in two continents worked together to create a high-quality film in time.

Our film promoting the HP Dragonfly convertible laptop was another collaborative tour-de-force, involving several award-winning partners working together across continents – among them being The Mill, an award-winning VFX house whose work touches feature films. The film’s special effects and beauty serve as a testament to the value of close, speedy collaboration between teams that are unconstrained by physical space.

A Closed Office, An Open World

With global production companies – working in TV, film, experiential and other visual content – having to close or otherwise stop work due to the economic effects of the pandemic, brands are understandably worried about how they can continue producing content. But new, innovative production methods and close digital collaboration enable them to bypass common constraints. 

As brands adapt to working through the pandemic, this spirit of collaboration and innovation become key to success. From virtual production and CGI to post-producing pre-existing content, there are many ways that brands can continue their output without missing a beat. “During this global pandemic, there are a lot of physical limitations which make shoots very challenging,” says Voerman. “In post production, we don’t have them.”