Check it out here!

The story line takes place in a park. The opening shot is of two guys who are sitting on two different park benches.  One is a nerd with a bag of Doritos.  The second is waiting for this girl friend with flowers.  Then with the power of Doritos, the unthinkable happens.

There was a CG scene that required the boy friend to be smashed by a Doritos bus. This was completed with After Effects and Photoshop.

Watch and laugh!

Here’s the commercial on Doritos’ website.

“Doritos Makes the Difference”

Six finalists will be chosen and given $25,000 cash prize by December 21, 2009. Then America will vote on the six and the top three commercials will go and be aired at this year’s Superbowl. Then whichever commercial is voted 1st, 2nd or 3rd on the USA Today meter after the superbowl, the prizes are 1st ($1,000,000), 2nd ($600,000) and 3rd ($400,000).

We’ve had a lot of people view our commercial and thankfully we’ve had a lot of laughs.

Some of the screenshots of the final commercial are shown below.

We took about 4.5 hours to shoot. I was DP and visual/fx supervisor. I had to set up several scenes for some animation later on in post. We also used a green screen during one scene.

We are not allowed to post the commercial until after the superbowl, but you can view the commercial here on Doritos’ website.

“Doritos… Don’t Ever Run Out!”

Green screening is one of my favorite parts of film making. I enjoy the creativity of setting up the raw plates and planning ahead for what kind of creation is going to take place in post to complete the visual/fx. It’s like making a painting. Start the masterpiece in the field and put on the finishing touches in post.

In order to have the scene look real, proper compositing is crucial.  The lighting of the subjects and surrounding props needs to be the same as the “keyed in” footage, otherwise the two different layers will not match up and will look different.

Another critical effect with a moving car scene is motion blurring.  You must remember that if we were really filming the side of a car moving at 50mph, the background would be out of focus and quite blurry.  All of these effects must be created/tricked in post.

The process can be quite meticulous, but when the final outcome looks real, it’s the best feeling you can have in post!

This car scene required a total of 9 different layers. This consisted of background plates, shadows and reflections. It takes a lot to make something so simple look real.

The shoot took place outside. The setting was a surprise going away party for one of the main characters.

The lighting was nice, and thankfully we got a lot of useful footage.

The genre of this film is comedy/drama.

The film is being shot in HD, and will be produced on Blu-ray and Standard DVD after completion.

We’re using the Sony HVR-V1U, along with the Letus35 Extreme DOF adapter.

While shooting in 24P, along with the DOF adapter, this is the closest we’re going to get to the “film look.” Then with a few post production tweaks (adjust levels, add film grain, etc.), we’ll be all set!

We’re aiming to have all of the footage shot within 8 months. So the film should be close to completion within 1 year. We’ll know a closer date several months down the road.

Our director is Jordan Gessler.

I (Michael), am the producer, as well as director of photography.

We’ll be posting more updates soon.