MTV Movie Awards with Before and After from Connor Swegle on Vimeo.

Aziz Ansari is f******g funny.  You could put any combination of letters in there between f and g and he’d still be hilarious. 

Continuing our relationship with MTV and director Evan Silver, we worked on visual effects for the 4-spot promo campaign.  The spots were shot in LA with Aziz Ansari, Kristen Bell, Sarah Silverman, Jeremy Renner, Zac Efron and Justin Bieber.  Yes, Justin Bieber.  The spots were produced by Kris Walter and edited by Tiffany Burchard over at NumberSix.

Mark Szumski, Click 3X creative director, worked with Evan in the pre-pro phase to determine any in-camera needs.  The key for the gags were having the look and feel of in-camera effects.  Once the edits were received, Szumski determined the best workflow for comping in any backgrounds that were shot on green, as well as a treatment for the patented “4D” look.  After trying to shoot the final spot “Squirrel” in-camera, they decided to do a composite in post.

MTV Movie Awards Baby from Connor Swegle on Vimeo.

The Hurt Locker Before and After

The Hurt Locker 2 Before and After

Squirrel Green Screen Shoot

Squirrel After

Unusual Suspects from Connor Swegle on Vimeo.

Part of a three-part promo campaign for I.D. (Investigation Discovery). The story behind the show is pretty simple but very engaging- the people who you least expect, can be the ones who did it. The story follows the twists and turns of an investigation, and we wanted the promo to do the same. Each of the three stories feature a different life path that ultimately ends up in a place that no one would have thought.

We started from 7 original concepts, ultimately tweaking it and whittling it down to one, working closely with the I.D. team to script and design. The result is three different stories told through different :15 reveals.

The concept boards are below.  I personally was going for the Betty White caricature concept, but then again, I think that The Mummy is a great movie.  Don’t. Ever. Take. My. Opinion. To. Heart.

Investigation Discovery (ID) Unusual Suspects Creative Concepts

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I’ll say it right now- I am not a huge fan of documentaries.  I think that they typically find the worst in human experience and really leverage it and make it a spectacle.  Take, for example, the upcoming movie Splice.  These two scientists Clive and Elsa, first of all who are in love (inter-office romances are always messy), have decided that genetically engineering a creature in the name of “science” is a good idea.  We all know how this story ends.  There were other documentaries like Gattaca and The Island of Dr. Moreau. (SPOILERRR WARRNNINNGGGG!!!)  In Gattaca, the world has become overrun by genetic paranoia, and on The Island of Dr. Moreau, cross-bred creatures walk and talk like humans until they fall apart into total chaos. 

Anyway, the MTV folks are doing a cross-promo for the doc.  For one of them, they actually got the creature to show up to film with the people from The City.  I don’t want to spoil the movie for anyone, but that creature is going to quite a disaster.  Keep an eye out on your local news.

Keep a look out on MTV for the sneak-preview interruptions that we edited, animated, and created CGI for, and on June 4th, go watch the movie.  It’s gonna be awesome.

MTV Splice - Design, Animation, Compositing by Click 3X Ent. from Connor Swegle on Vimeo.

Most wars have guns, blood, guts, crying mothers, and brothers in arms.  Not so much on the Food Network.

The Food Network is launching their battlefield, but it will be a kitchen and the weapons of choice will be spatulas, frosting, sprinkles, and passive aggressive slanders veiled as compliments, fired at competing chefs.  The show is Cupcake Wars and it launches June 14th.  For the promo campaign, Brian Hoffman brought an idea to us that would play off of the juxtaposition between the battle-ready title and the actual subject matter- cupcakes.  The result was a bunch of exploded cupcakes on the cutting room floor, few overly-sugared crew, and a super-slo-mo exploding cupcake resolve shot on Phantom at 800fps.

Check out the spot and the making-of:

CUPCAKE WARS PROMO and How we did it from Connor Swegle on Vimeo.

Shoot over any questions to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), or give us a buzz at 212 726 1900.

MTV VMA Before and After from Connor Swegle on Vimeo.

Four Scenes from The 2009 MTV VMA Campaign that we worked on with MTV director Seyi Peter-Thomas and producer Kris Walter:

1. Russel Brand: shot downtown during the day in the Cortland Alley below Canal Street.  Post effect was to turn day to night and composite in Radio City Music Hall.
2. Ne-Yo: shot in a Brooklyn warehouse.  Post effect was to composite in the Brooklyn Bridge and add night sky effects.
3. Katy Perry: shot in a Manhattan studio.  Post effect was full on CGI rendering if the night skyline and compositing it in with lighting effects.
4. Taylor Swift: shot in a Nashville studio with environmental effects shot in Times Square.  Post effect was compositing in the Times Square footage and adding in environmental effects