Sol Design FX, a long-standing shop in the Cutters’ family of companies, changed its moniker to Flavor in August 2013, helping the design/VFX division to attract attention on its own coinciding with the addition of a couple of key new players. Cutters Studios’ CEO Tim McGuire shed some light on the decision to launch Flavor, recalling, “A little more than a year ago, together with my Cutters Studios colleagues, we recognized that something new and exciting was happening in the design industry, and we decided to refocus our talent and effort to make a statement. Together, after a lot of brainstorming we decided to relaunch our VFX and design brand as Flavor. That rebranding effort fit perfectly with the addition of executive producer Darren Jaffe and executive creative director Brad Tucker [both formerly of Superfad], and helped us create some considerable buzz across the industry at-large.”
Flavor has since experienced an infusion of work, which has often engaged other Cutters’ companies. A prime example would be a national commercial for Ford from Team Detroit. Entitled “Front and Back,” the :30 spot–in which Tucker played an instrumental role–extended the long-running Ford Trucks “Rant” campaign with a bold, powerful homage to heroism and reliability, using a hybrid design and animation style and original live-action footage shot on-location in Los Angeles. Marshaling their talent and resources to bring the ad to fruition were design and production teams from affiliated companies RingSide Creative and Cutters Studios divisions Flavor, Cutters and Dictionary Films.
“Over the past couple of years, the visual inspiration for our F-150 Rant campaign has been the work of Saul Bass,” explained Brad Hensen, group creative director at Team Detroit. “We’ve tried to have a lot of fun with positive and negative space. For Super Duty, we wanted to keep a sense of that visual language, but give it its own identity. Brad Tucker and his team at Ringside/Flavor/Cutters hit it perfectly. In fact, it was difficult to choose from the multiple options they provided. It was a great experience because they guided the project through every phase.”
With Tucker leading the design efforts, storyboards were created by RingSide’s Keith Slawinski, Nicholas Mouhot and Paul Williams, and work commenced across the U.S. RingSide also provided VFX, project and account management support. Dictionary Films executive producer Chris Rossiter, line producer Richard Kaylor and their team then organized a shoot with 2015 Ford F-450 and F-250 Super Duty trucks in an LA-area quarry. Working with DP Jordan Valenti, the crew used an ARRI ALEXA XT digital camera system on the Mercedes ML55 Edge System from Performance Filmworks, capturing footage at a variety of speeds, craning and rotating to present a multitude of shots for both truck models on different terrain.
Meanwhile, design and animation took place in Detroit at RingSide, with Adobe Photoshop and After Effects, and Autodesk Maya serving as primary production tools. “The ability for us all to maintain close contact with Brad and the entire team throughout production was a key to this project’s success,” said Dave Peyton, RingSide’s executive producer, who was integral in uniting the team efforts–which included more than a dozen creative artists in Detroit alone–and ensuring that work-in-progress and finished content reached Cutters editor Chris Moore as soon as possible.
“Essentially, Chris’s early rough-cut became the template for each step to follow,” Peyton continued. “That allowed us to lock-in timings, identify our selected truck scenes and complete rough comps…and it gave our clients the confidence that we were on the right track very early on.”
RingSide artists also handled final project color, with staff colorist Rick Unger using Quantel’s Pablo Rio to artistic effect. “Each of the two Ford trucks had its own rotoscoped matte, which allowed me to manipulate in layers,” said Unger. “While we had a tight timeline, this approach provided an efficient means for unifying the colors to maximum effect.”
In addition to Ford, Flavor’s other recent ad endeavors include:
–The newest TV ad in the evolving Frontier Communications campaign from Ryan Partnership, Flavor’s artists have gone from making a live-action version of spokesman “Frank the buffalo” talk, to creating a CG version of Frank in Maya.
–For Leo Burnett’s creative campaigns for Maytag and Sprint among many others, Flavor’s artists are handling increasingly challenging visual effects, final-color and finishing assignments where Flame Premium and Lustre are playing vital roles.
–An eight-spot campaign for agency Karsh Hagan on behalf of Arrow Electronics relied equally upon original design and animation as well as editing, color-grading and finishing.
This work spans Flavor’s facilities in Chicago, Detroit, L.A., NY and Tokyo, each of which houses at least one Flame Premium system (Chicago has four while Detroit offers six). Providing its talent with the best in technical resources is a Flavor–and Cutters–staple. “Our facilities were some of the very first to offer Autodesk Flame back in the early 1990s, and that’s why we continue to attract premier talents at the forefront of the industry and arm them with the world’s best technologies, like Flame Premium 2015,” said Craig Duncan, Cutters Studios’ executive producer and partner. “People know we offer tremendous value and artistry, and that we are committed to supporting them to the ends of the earth; seeing the increasing demand for these talents and capabilities is incredibly rewarding.”
Invited to participate in Autodesk’s official presentations at this year’s NAB conference, Flavor’s creative director Brian Higgins detailed the company’s standard project approaches. First, he explained, Flavor’s artists typically model characters, objects and environments early into project workflows using Maya and Zbrush, before moving into layout and animation in Maya. Specialized software often comes into play–for example, PFTrack to match moving live-action shots, Realflow to digitally simulate liquid splashes, or Shave and a Haircut to groom digital fur. As things proceed, Flavor supplies work-in-progress renders to editorial departments for rough cuts, and with approvals, proceeds to use Renderman/Nuke for final rendering, and Flame for final compositing.
“Color has also been a huge growth area for us,” Higgins added. “With the addition of Lustre to Flame Premium, we can do ultra-sophisticated color work with our clients. The skillsets needed for high-end compositing work and color grading overlap quite a bit, so it has been very natural for us to expand in this direction. People use Lustre to grade summer blockbuster features, and of course it works just as well for commercials.”
Higgins continued, “We’ve grown our color-grading business so much over the last few years that we have built an entirely new suite to handle the work. Having color in-house also means that clients who come to Cutters for offline can design, color, composite and finish with Flavor, all in one stop.”
Together with its Cutters Studios partners Another Country, Cutters, Dictionary Films and Picnic Media, Flavor represents a wide range of production capabilities. Under the leadership of executive creative director Tucker, creative directors Higgins and Brian McCauley and executive producers Jaffe and Neal Cohen, Flavor, a global collective of designers and visual artists, creates commercials, interactive, live-action, VFX and design works.
Note:
"Model Makers" is a column that explores production and postproduction-related companies that are changing or evolving their business models. We’ll talk to companies about their re-branding, re-tooling, new divisions, mergers, diversification and other developments that shape and in some instances re-define them. (If your company has an exciting changing business models success story to tell, drop us an email at rgriefer@shootonline.com or rgoldrich@shootonline.com–major changes need to be involved for column consideration)
