Size Stihl Matters.
Click here to view STIHL - Tiny Dealer
Director Damien Kelly has just completed a big job about a little man for Stihl Dealers. Conceived by creative hot shop The Foundry, the commercial reinforces Stihl’s serious support message by depicting a tiny Stihl Dealer living with one of his customers to help him out whenever he needs it.
Shot over three days, the commercial required a large amount of green screen, rig building, model making, and compositing work in order to create the overall effect of a miniature man in a giant world. It also required a lot of careful planning to make the effect as believable as possible. After all, people are never going to believe that our tiny man is real but Damien wanted to suspend that disbelief. To help convey this he decided to treat each effect as a single shot, which resulted in a much more convincing illusion.
One of the most challenging shots was when the customer hangs the little guy up on the shed wall. To achieve this a rig with giant hooks was built so that the actor could be literally hung up on it using cables. It meant that the motion of the little guy being carried and then attached to the wall was real rather than a less convincing animated motion effect. The little guy was then composited into the hand of the customer, who was hanging up a proxy scale model.
Click to view Effects Sequence 1
Another tricky shot was when the tiny Stihl Dealer passes the big screwdriver to the customer. Damien felt that large scale props and sets would look fake so instead decided to break the shot up into two components. The first was a separate background plate of the bench with a small rig that had two retractable claws to hold and release the actual-size tool. This meant that the actor could reach in and take the real tool out of shot in real time. The second was to film the Stihl Dealer holding a proxy tool that was again built to scale. The two shots were then composited together to create a seamless visual effect.
Click to view Effects Sequence 2
Director: Damien Kelly
Producer: Helene Nicol
Line Producer: Julian Bryant
DOP: Wayne Aistrope
Post Production: Active Motion
Agency: The Foundry
Creative Director: Annie Price
Art Director: Melinda Pritchard
Writer: Eugene Horat
Music: String Theory Creative
Agency Producer: Jon Mahney