Directed by Dante Ariola, lensed by Emmanuel Lubezki and with VFX from The Mill NY, 'Parallels' contemplates the simple tenet that life is a series of choices. We watch Dafoe in dramatic black and white vignettes reflecting upon various choices, until finally, like other Jim Beam connoisseurs, he makes the bold choice that takes him where he's supposed to be.
Our Shoot Supervisor/2D Artist Dan Williams, says, "It was incredible to have such a big Hollywood actor inhabit so many roles across one project. It was a big-scale production with 2-3 locations per day and major makeup and costume changes. Willem Dafoe had an incredible ability to transform into each character with every costume change."
The Mill team used 2D to replace the Sumo wrestler's head with Dafoe's in the Sumo wrestling vignette, instead of scanning the heads in 3D. Led by 2D Lead Artist Corey Brown and Williams, the team's 2D work included using clean plates of Dafoe's face from other close up shots; these elements were re-lit, graded and tracked onto the prosthetic, and morphed in 2D to seamlessly blend into the shot.
Other touches lending to the spot's unflinching aesthetic are being shot with an anamorphic lens, which required an involved cleanup but resulted in a more cinematic look. The Mill team also created the Jim Beam logo and comped both logo and glass pane into the opening shot. And the team did 2D crowd replacement/multiplication for the crowd scene at the chess tournament featuring Dafoe as a chess master.
Agency: Strawberry Frog
Producer: Sherri Levy
Creative Directors: Jason Koxvald, Josh Greenspan
Production Company: MJZ LA
Director: Dante Ariola
Producer: Natalie Hill
Director of Photography: Emmanuel Lubezki
Editing Company: Rock Paper Scissors
Editor: Adam Pertofsky
Edit Assist: Neil Meiklejohn
VFX & Design: The Mill
Executive Producer: Jo Arghiris
VFX Producers: Zu Al-Kidiri, Adrienne Britzman
Shoot Supervisor: Dan Williams
2D Lead Artist: Corey Brown
3D Lead Artists: Wyatt Savarese, Gong Myung Lee
2D Artist: Dan Williams
3D Artists: Tim Kim, Hassan Taimur (Crowd Effects/Massive)
Assists: Rosalind Paradis, Albert Cook, Melissa Graff, Randall Krueger, Brendan O'Neil, Brian Houlihan, Patrick Mahoney