Produced by UK director James Rouse of Outsider, the five "Fairy Snap Mother" spots begin with an amateur extreme sport athlete ? skateboarder, mountain biker, skier ? preparing to pull off an extreme maneuver. While they are reticent leading up to the jump, the Slim Jim Fairy Snap Mother is there to give them some encouragement, along with a whack on the back with a Slim Jim snack. In each, the landing proves painful to watch.
Baraka's editor David Cox says the studio was initially provided with a dozen crash sequences and helped determine which would work best taking into consideration the need to recreate locations and camera angles for the sequences that would surround the crashes. In-camera zooms were used for transitions from new footage to crash sequences and back out to new footage. Others transitions involved objects in front of the camera being used as wipes. To maintain as much consistency as possible, the live action sequeces were shot hand-held using a domestic DV camera. The results were a very authentic looking "amateur video."
Tracking took place in Baraka's SGO Mistika (www.sgo.es) suite. The Fairy Snap Mother was shot against greenscreen and his wings were created by Aleksandar Stiglic using Alias Maya. Stiglic simulated the flight of the humming bird and used Maya?s DT3D Skin Shader to give the wings a transparent/translucent appearance. The processes were repeated for each of the spots.
Using Alias Maya, Baraka 3D animators Sarah Vincent and George Humphris added crash helmets to the crash sequences, matching the helmets that appear in the new footage. The five spots can be viewed on the Baraka site at: www.baraka.co.uk/projects/slimjim.