Budweiser: Bridge

Project overview by The Mill:

The Mill Helps Bud Deliver Super Bowl Hit with “Bridge”.

DDB Chicago has done it again. The agency, enlisting White Label’s Gold Lion-winning director Paul Middleditch and our top-notch team of FX artists at The Mill NY, created another quintessentially crowd-pleasing Super Bowl spot for Budweiser. “Bridge” aired on the Big Game Feb. 7th.

“Leading every step of the way, we kept in mind that this had to feel like a Bud Super Bowl spot,” say our Shoot Supervisors Yann Mabille and Westley Sarokin. Mabille led the 3D team, while Sarokin was Lead Flame. “‘Bridge’ has universal appeal and depicts that entertaining Americana aesthetic the Budweiser brand is famous for.”

“Bridge” is set in Anytown, U.S.A., where panic ensues when the bridge goes out with a Bud delivery truck stuck on the other side. The whole town rallies and runs to the ravine, improvising trestle and bridge with their own bodies.

“Visual FX with people doing fantastic things is always challenging,” Sarokin laughs. “Paul is a great action director who’s very in tune with the FX process. He captured a lot in-camera and showed faith in us to set up a second unit to shoot additional elements such as plates of the truck and people in various positions and groupings that we could use to assemble the various components of the bridge. When we got all the footage together, we immediately did rough comps of all the main shots using the various elements to rough out what the bridge would actually look like.

“At the same time, the 3D team was building a town’s worth of virtual people for the wide shots in the spot where we planned on using both 2D and 3D people elements to make the bridge. From there, we advanced the job in stages, matching lighting, perspective and adding layers of detail to the animation of the truck driving over the people bridge. The agency and the director were involved step by step as we collaborated on the spot’s evolution.

“Ultimately,” Sarokin says, “we hope the final effect gives the viewer a glimpse of something completely fantastic, and yet looks as if somehow it could have actually happened.”

Bud’s “Bridge” made the Top 10 of USA Today’s prestigious AdMeter of the Game’s favorite spots.

And in case you’re wondering, Saints 31, Colts 17!

Credits:

Agency: DDB Chicago
Agency Producer: Scott Kemper
SVP, Group Creative Director: Barry Burdiak
VP, Creative Director: John Hayes
VP, Creative Director, Copywriter: Patrick Knoll
VP Creative Director, Art Director: Steve Bougdanos
Production Co.: aWhitelabelProduct
Director: Paul Middleditch
Prod. Co. Partner/FEP: Annique DeCaestecker, Ellen Jacobson-Clarke
EP: Peter Masterton (Plaza Films, Sydney)
Prod. Co. Line Producer: Anna Joseph
DP: Bill Pope
Editorial Co.: Panic & Bob Editing
Editor: David Baxter
Asst. Editor: Tyler Hopkins
Post/FFX: The Mill NY
Producer: Camila DeBiaggi
Shoot Supervisors: Yann Mabille, Westley Sarokin
Flame Lead: Westley Sarokin
3D Lead: Vincent Baertsoen
Flame Assists: Gigi Ng, Greg Cutler, Pete Rypstra, David Birkill
3D Team: Graham Clark, Marco Iozzi, Alek Vacura, Peter Devlin, Ajit Menon
Telecine: Co 3 L.A.
Colorist: Stefan Sonnenfeld
Kits: Flame, Flare, Combustion, XSI, Mental Ray, Massive
Music: Elias
Composers: Jonathan Elias, Dave Gold
Executive Producer: Ann Haugen

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