Time Sculpture
Crystal Castles) | |
Production company | Hungry Man |
---|---|
Produced by | Rebecca Pople (agency) Sally Newsom (production company) |
Country | United Kingdom |
Budget | £3,000,000 (campaign)[1] |
Official website | http://www.toshiba.co.uk/upscaling |
Time Sculpture is a British
Time Sculpture was directed by
Sequence
Time Sculpture opens with a fixed camera view of an undecorated art studio. On the open floor is a chair and a platform trolley. A man and a woman walk into frame from left and right respectively. The man falls to the floor and begins doing push-ups. The woman holding a set of black cards walks to the centre, spins around and throws the cards in the air. The music ("
Production
Background
The second half of the 2000s (decade) saw electronics conglomerate
The middling results of the campaign caused Grey to re-evaluate its approach, leading to a new campaign, which would see an advertisement "push the boundaries of what was possible.” To this end, Grey London re-examined several proposals presented to them in the past which had been abandoned as unworkable, before deciding upon a concept which had been proposed by Mitch Stratten. The idea, inspired by Eadweard Muybridge, was to build on the "bullet time" technology pioneered by the Wachowskis in the feature film The Matrix, by replacing the stills cameras with moving image cameras to show movement not seen before as backward and forward simultaneously appose to the frozen moment of "dead time". The title “time sculpture” came to the director on the way to Grey London with his producer where they presented the project as a production and post-production blueprint.
Production
The idea had originally been put aside as unachievable for a singular reason: the project required a quantity of data unprecedented in a television commercial,[7] and would be one of the biggest visual effects jobs ever undertaken by a commercial production company.[8] After the technique was decided upon, the agency sourced a specific creative teams to collaborate with the director.[9] They wanted to restrict using computer-generated imagery,[7] and stuntwork would be kept to a minimum to maintain focus on the ordinary movements which would be seen in a completely new way through the technique.[9] Based on early tests films of the director, a simple treatment was assembled. The piece would be set in an art school studio to "showcase creativity at its rawest" according to creative director Andy Amadeo.[9] Timings of predeterminate movements of several performers were choreographed using computer simulations which also informed the set construction at Pinewood Studios where the shoot took place.[10] Colour was used to isolate movement and enhance structure.
It took over a month and a half to assemble the engineering team who would work on creating the custom 360 moving image capture system.[7] The rig which supported 200 Gigashot high-definition video cameras requisitioned from Toshiba,[7] was 1.8 m-high[11] and weighed over half a tonne.[8] It was constructed in two halves, each covering 180 degrees of the inward view of a 14 m circular space in the centre of the constructed set.[11] Once the rig itself was assembled, it took a team of four technicians three days to set the focus and alignment on all 200 cameras.[11] Technology devised by electrical engineer Richard Glover[7] was used to synchronously activate the entire system from a single remote control.[12]
Post-production
Each of the fourteen performers in Time Sculpture were captured separately from all angles by the 200 cameras.
Release and reception
The final 60-second cut of Time Sculpture premiered on 10 November 2008 on
While Time Sculpture proved popular, attracting over 500,000 views on
It's being able to manipulate time in a way we haven’t seen before, to be able to record it and edit it in a three-dimensional space. It’s a 4-D experiment; we are not locked to time.
— The New York Times
An alternate version of Time Sculpture was later exhibited by the director in London after it caught interest from the art world.
References
- ^ a b Sweney, Mark; "Toshiba showcases world's first 'timesculpture' advert", The Guardian, 10 November 2008. Retrieved 5 August 2010.
- ^ Williams, Martyn; "Toshiba, NEC Share Details of Blue-Laser Storage Archived 15 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine", IDG News Service, 29 August 2002. Retrieved 24 April 2010.
- ^ Kemp, Ed; "News Analysis: Round one to Blu-ray", 27 June 2007. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
- ^ a b "The Week: Creative Reviews - Grey lands £25m Toshiba", Campaign, 22 June 2007. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
- ^ "Making of Space Chair Archived 19 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine", Grey London, 30 November 2009. Retrieved 25 April 2010 via Boards website.
- ^ Sanderson, Nikki; "Toshiba returns to TV with innovation ad", Campaign, 21 January 2008. Retrieved 5 August 2010.
- ^ a b c d e f g Stratten, Mitch; "Making of: Time Sculpture", Hungry Man (2008).
- ^ The Mill, 10 December 2008.
- ^ a b c d "Hotshots: In-Camera Invention Archived 13 April 2010 at the Wayback Machine", Shots, 12 November 2008. Retrieved 3 August 2010.
- ^ The Mill, 6 April 2009.
- ^ a b c d Nettleton, Kate; "Close-Up: Live issue - Toshiba eschews the 'big idea' for technology", Campaign, 21 November 2008. Retrieved 5 August 2010.
- ^ a b "Toshiba Premieres the World's First Timesculpture Advert." Presswire, 11 November 2008. Retrieved 5 August 2010 via Accessmylibrary.com.
- ^ a b "Toshiba runs pounds 3m HD ads", Marketing, 5 November 2008.
- ^ "Watch Toshiba's Matrix-style ad", The Guardian, 10 November 2008. Retrieved 5 August 2010.
- ^ a b "Campaign's top 10 TV and cinema ads", Campaign, 12 December 2008. Retrieved 5 August 2010.
- ^ "Diary: Pick of the week - Grey/Toshiba", Campaignlive.co.uk, 21 November 2008. Retrieved 5 August 2010.
- ^ "Winners: Time Sculpture Archived 15 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine", D&AD Awards (2009). Retrieved 24 April 2010.
- ^ "Archive: Television/Cinema/Digital Bronze Awards", Clio Awards (2008). Retrieved 5 August 2010.
- ^ "The Midsummer Awards Winners Archived 21 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine", Midsummer Awards (2009). Retrieved 25 April 2010.
- ^ Miller, Lia (13 December 2008). "Timesculpture". Nytimes.com. Retrieved 6 January 2022.
- ^ "Grok Institute present…GROK FEBRUARY 19th – MARCH 6th 2009". Fadmagazine.com. 19 February 2009. Retrieved 6 January 2022.
- ^ "Wiley - Numbers In Action. Here's the eskiboy's..." Chrishillary.tumblr.com. Retrieved 6 January 2022.
- ^ "Most moving image cameras used in a composite film shot". Guinness World Records. Retrieved 6 January 2022.
- ^ "Toshiba Time Sculpture Sets World Record Archived 13 April 2010 at the Wayback Machine", Shots, 1 April 2009. Retrieved 5 August 2010.
- ^ [1] [permanent dead link]
External links
- Time Sculpture, via video-sharing website YouTube.