La Isla Mexican Restaurant TV Commercial
La Isla Mexican Restaurant located in Hermitage, PA. Although La Isla is a small local establishment, it has fantastic food and a great atmosphere that always keeps the restaurant crowded.
Project Overview
La Isla Mexican Restaurant approached Cinemanix Productions to develop a 30 second commercial for broadcast in the local area. Cinemanix Productions was tasked with development of the entire concept for the commercial. The only guide lines given were to stay simple, look great and be funny.
After the initial meeting, it was decided that the commercial would be shot and delivered in HD. The first step in the development was the script that had the breakdowns for the commercial. Once the script was approved, basic story boards were developed along with some basic 3D previsualization to help with the camera work and direction.
Utilizing a small and very versatile crew, the commercial was shot with the Panasonic HXV200 with a film lens adapter. The P2 card work flow allowed for the use of 2 laptop computers on the set and it gave the best means for footage capture and redundancy. The post production and editing was a mix of Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere.
Deliverable
One important aspect of the commercial was the animation of the La Isla logo’s pepper man. The use of animation was an important part of the commercial project because he would essentially be the voice actor in the commercial. The “toon” look of the character was really important to the client and although the use of 2D animation and Flash was an option, it was decided that the use of a 3D character would allow for the maximum versatility.
Softimage XSI was used to model/rig/animate/render the pepper man character. Facial animation was constructed with the use of shape animation and synched to the audio voice over track. Once the character was animated and rendered, he was composited into the frames in Adobe After Effects. The final delivery was on a DVD for broadcast in the local market. Although this delivery was in SD resolution for broadcast, we have the full HD 720P version cut for use in any future broadcast in HD.
