Zombies! Run! | VFX for AFCU Commercial

A small job, but a fun one nonetheless. Another video production studio here in the valley, called Mighty Clever, needed some help for a commercial they were doing for America First Credit Union (AFCU). I believe they have been doing commercials for AFCU for the last couple years at least, and they have this fun zombie theme going on. They just needed help for one shot, here it is below.

You may not even notice what was done on the shot, and if so, that means I did my job right?

There are two things done for this shot. The first is the large sign above the store entrance. In the original shot, the sign didn’t have anything on it. This required a planar track with a simple composite. The last element added to the shot is the fire in the barrel. This was a fire simulation was done in Blender, and then composited into the shot, along with the sign, in Blender. The light emitting from the fire required some reconstruction of the set, and this was composited onto the original shot to make the additions a bit more convincing.

Since we finished this shot, we have had the opportunity to help out with a few more internal AFCU videos that required more planar tracking, but this video covers the way I approached those videos, and it would be a bit unnecessary to show them here.