Success Story
Darling is a post-production company that specializes in colour grade, VFX and finishing for international advertising. The team at Darling recently worked on an ad for the Canadian Cancer Society, who partnered with NHL and NHLPA to unite the hockey community in support of people living with cancer and their families.
Paul Binney, Flame Artist and Partner at Darling, gave us an insight into the process and how they created this important ad for a great cause.
This was a great project with a bold and ambitious idea. We were asked to composite many different NHL legends together on the bench over multiple shots. The idea was to visually illustrate the line: "When it comes to cancer, we’re all on the same team."
The initial challenges were unique. Darling had to marry footage of different eras seamlessly together. Not only were the broadcast colours of the vintage footage different from that of contemporary footage, but they often had different frame rates, aspect ratios and scan modes. Darling were getting an assortment of footage and we truly were at the mercy of what was being provided. Getting a composite like this to work is a sleight of hand and this is where Autodesk Flame shined bright.
The goal was to seamlessly create the illusion of multiple players from different teams to sit, chat and interact with each other on one bench. As is often the case with this type of challenge, we had to find a bridge point. There is only so far you can improve an old interlaced shot of Guy Lafleur, so we decided early that we would elevate the compromised footage as much as possible and then distress the clean, new footage enough to make them appear in the same world. Our Flame Artist extraordinaire Lauren Rempel did most of the heavy lifting on this job and she truly brought this one to life.
Looking at the number of players involved (sometimes more than 10 in a shot) and the type of VFX involved we knew it was going to be a challenge, but we were confident we could get it done both on time and within budget.
Darling were confident in Autodesk Flame’s ability to keep up with our demands and deadlines. Darling had multiple operators working simultaneously, all accessing one machine through Shared Libraries. Darling could effortlessly take shots from another suite and insert it into their connected sources sequence and populate across multiple edits in seconds. Darling truly don’t know how they could have pulled that off on any other platform.
CineSys has routinely provided Darling with all the hardware, central storage and additional software they've ever needed to be a success. CineSys have been with Darling through the years by offering both onsite support and remote logins to deal with any issues that come up. These Linux machines are temperamental and they need a gentle hand, which is always how it is handled when Darling gets additional help from CineSys. As a smaller shop Darling does not have a full time IT department and they rely on them to help with their hardware or software concerns and they’ve always delivered.
The final outcome was a huge success. Darling was able to bring the clients and creatives’ ideas to life and more importantly, they were able to bring added attention to the Canadian Cancer Society.
The subject matter is one that we feel very strongly about. Anything that Darling can do to help draw attention to the Canadian Cancer Society is worthwhile. Visit their website for more information and please consider donating. When it comes to cancer… we ARE all on the same team.
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