Staropramen
Go back into the past and have a look at how Smíchov looked a couple of decades and even centuries ago. In this new spot for famous Prague brewer – Staropramen, we transformed the modern pulsing neighbourhood back into the proletarian quarter that it used to be. Buckle your seatbelts and get swept away by all of the details of this brewery and its surroundings.
Tomáš – Production Manager
The most demanding aspect from a production point of view was time. We had a very limited amount of time for very long footage. The longest version of the spot is 130 seconds, which is approximately 70 shots. We had to work on almost all of them in order to achieve the epochal look we needed. We were truly traveling through time, as we went back to the 19th century and continued all the way up to the present day.
There is one shot in particular – the drone shot – where we had to transform contemporary Smíchov into how the quarter looked in the 1960s. We had to add a ship yard, which was on the riverbank back then, and wear down the facades of the houses.
But this was only one of the fifteen demanding matte paintings. We had to do quite a lot of research on how the Smíchov neighbourhood and brewery looked throughout history. Just to give you an example – drain pipes – these are quite a historical novelty. There were none in the year 1800, and so we head to retouch all of the building shots in order to get rid of them. These are some of the details, which may seem marginal, but the directors – who are very precise – insisted on them. We had to adjust the windows to correspond with the period aesthetic – as well as chimneys, cranes and passways. As you can see, it was a lot of work.
As I’ve said, time was our biggest constraint. We had ten days for the entire postproduction – from the edit lock to the final presentations. We had to organise our pipeline in the most efficient way to ensure that everybody was ready and knew exactly what to do and when.
We collaborated with the directorial duo Wolfberg who are extremely exigent as far as the image is concerned – which is glaringly obvious in everything they do. They leave no room for error, which is great and we love working with them. That is why these ten days weren’t only about getting the work done but getting it done in the absolute best way possible.
We compiled a team of twenty people from matte painters to compositors to our production manager, who all spent approximately 1200 hours on the project. It was hard, but I believe we delivered a great piece of work.
František – VFX Supervisor
From a VFX perspective, it was not such a hard project. With great directors and skilful cameramen, it was pretty straightforward. I was on set and made sure everything went smoothly. But once again, we were competing with time. That’s why you have to have a team of experienced people who can do the job and leave no room for error. Otherwise, you cannot possibly deliver an over two-minute film in approximately one week. Luckily, we have such people on our side, which is why we can and do take on jobs like this one.