Cooking With Gas

When Kilgannon Advertising ramped up their TV campaign to introduce Vectren Source to the New York natural gas market, they asked us to literally thrust Vectren Source onto the scene with a brilliant burst of (digital) flame.  WaveGuide Studios provided a compete suite of postproduction services for “Choices”, featuring a driver’s indecision when confronted with an unmarked “T” interchange. 

We built the spot around stock footage from Getty Images. Working with stock footage isn’t just a matter of dropping the shot into the timeline.  In this case, the master shot required multi-band color and exposure correction, plus there were elements that had to be completely removed. For instance, two birds flew across the frame, one after the other.  The second one was distracting, so Eric had to remove it, as well as a ghost reflection of the car’s turn signals and brake lights cast from a filter in front of the camera lens.  In a shot of a moving car, that can be tricky.

In addition to the stock footage cleanup, Eric created the Vectren Source logo treatment, in which a blue flame bursts into being, then burns away the black coating of a reflective chrome rendition of the logo.  The logo is entirely invisible on a black background until the flame acts upon it.  The effect combined elements produced in 3D using Maya Unlimited modeling, animation and fluid simulation modules.

Todd built a thirty-track immersive soundscape for the spot in the audio studio, making use of digital synthesis, the WaveGuide Digital sound effects library and foley recorded specific to the project.