Lance Armstrong Nike Commercial

Nike played this excellent Lance commercial all the time during the Tour. It's called "Magnet" and shows how Lance attracts attention throughout a training ride. I've probably seen it fifty times over the last 23 days. I Tivo through most commercials but this one always found me pausing, blasting the stereo and watching once or twice. As the Tour rolls to an end today I wanted to make sure that many years from now I'd be able to use this impressive commercial to jog my memory. I've always found that music brings back the "feel" and emotion of periods in my life very well.

Certainly, some of the emotion I experience from this commercial comes from my knowledge of Lance. This commercial does a great job of bringing together a number of compelling concepts.

Dedication: we see Lance out riding a hill in the middle of nowhere. He's not doing it for the spotlight. He's doing it because he loves it.

Ability: Lance can ride amazing distances with incredible power. We see him sweat.

Comeback, charity, underdog: he rides past a cancer ward, recalling his comeback from cancer and his ongoing charity work.

Leadership: at the end we see people from all around the city trying to catch up. Lance leads them comfortably.

The commercial is certainly beautiful. The music complements it perfectly. But I'm not sure whether I'd get the same reaction if I didn't know as much about Lance... and if I wasn't a bit of a cyclist myself.

Here are some details about the ad (be careful, sometimes knowing what happens behind-the-scenes can take away some of the magic):

Clio-winning Los Angeles visual effects and design company A52 today detailed their visual effects and design work for RSA USA and award-winning film, music video and commercial director Jake Scott for Wieden+Kennedy’s new Nike spot entitled “The Magnet.” The :90 spot had its broadcast debut during the NBA Playoffs on May 19, and is also set to run nationwide in theatres before screenings of Spiderman 2.



The spot begins with a gorgeous panoramic scene off the northern California coastline moving in over jumping dolphins and rollicking waves to discover five-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong cycling along on a high-speed training ride. Outpacing a passenger train, Armstrong’s magnetism soon attracts a flock of geese, a gang of bikers, kids inside a hospital and – back on a remote road – a herd of buffalo. Armstrong pushes on through a rain storm, amidst flocks of fireflies and bats, before arriving in San Francisco where a throng of amateur racers literally fills the streets behind him. At last, momentarily solo again, the champ’s attractive force helps a young boy on his BMX close the gap between them.



The project’s creative and production teams worked closely with A52 for start-to-finish support. To capture perfect performances from each animal actor (besides the buffalo), A52’s CGI team led by 3D supervisor Denis Gauthier created the opening scene’s dolphins, as well as each goose, firefly and bat that appears. The opening scene’s crashing waves were also enhanced by the CGI team, using 3Dequalizer by Science-D-Visions to track the live-action footage, then creating the CG water in the finished scene using Side Effects Software’s Houdini. The creatures were also created using Houdini and Deep Paint 3D, rendered with Pixar’s Renderman and composited in Silicon Grail Chalice.



After filming Armstrong in-action on the green screen stage at Austin Studios in Texas, Scott captured the spot’s extensive location imagery in San Francisco and other remote areas in northern California with a photo-double for the celebrity sports star. At A52’s studio, led by visual effects supervisor Patrick Murphy, A52’s visual effects team replaced the double’s face and shoulders with Armstrong’s as necessary throughout the spot.



Moving through the spot, here’s a quick rundown of A52’s other visual contributions: Macro shot that moves up from bike pedals to Armstrong’s face (filmed on green screen), composited Armstrong into scene and added bikers into background plate; shot with bikers, head replacement; overhead scene of buffalo, composited multiple layers of live-action buffalo; rain scene, added rain and lighting effects; firefly scene, head and shoulders replacement and added CGI fireflies; tunnel scene, composited in Armstrong (filmed on green screen) and CGI bats; tunnel exit, lighting effects and added CGI bats; Armstrong rides down hill at night, crane removal; Armstrong in city, head and shoulders replacement.



For most of the spot’s scenes, A52’s team also replaced skies, enhanced colors and provided clean-up to remove rigs, etc.



Ranking the spot among the firm’s top 10 of all time, Patrick Murphy acknowledged the common vision of W+K’s creative team and Jake Scott which brought the project together as smoothly as possible. Also commenting on the many ways the spot leveraged A52’s strengths, Murphy added, “The project challenged all departments, not just CGI or 2D. Even though it was split into multiple shots for CGI to create their photoreal elements, their work was constantly flowing into our 2D departments so that we could integrate the pieces for Jake and the creatives to see it all coming together. As a result, it was a total team effort.”



The team for Wieden+Kennedy included creative director Hal Curtis, creative director/copywriter Mike Byrne, art director James Selman and producer Vic Palumbo.



Together with executive producers Rick Hassen and Darcy Leslie Parsons, on-set VFX supervisors Scott Boyajan (who also served as project producer) and Westley Sarokin oversaw the project for A52. A52’s 3D animators were Gauthier, Jeff Willette and Craig Halperin, and Sarokin also supported the project as 2D animator.



Production was overseen by RSA USA’s executive producer Fran McGivern and producer David Mitchell. Max Malkin served as the project’s director of photography and Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company 3 handled telecine. The editorial team from Rock Paper Scissors was comprised of editor Angus Wall, producer Dave Sellars and assistant editor Dave Anderson. The spot’s music, composed by Dave Wittman and Jimmy Haun at Elias Arts Los Angeles with support from creative director David Gold and head of production Dayna Turcotte, features the vocal talents of Kathleen Fisher. The sound was designed by creative director Dane Davis and Eddie Kim at 740 Sound/Danetracks with help from producer Scott Ganary, and Jeff Payne at Eleven Sound Studios in Santa Monica mixed the final audio.

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