PBS "Goldfish" commercial
 

There is an incredible commercial on PBS showing a goldfish in a fishtank watching TV and get's inspired to jump out of his tank because of tv footage showing salmon jumping upstream.....the commercial goes on to show an incredible voyage the goldfish must take with dangers along the way to eventually end up in a river (jumps out of a window onto an umbrella then into a water tank etc....)........has anyone seen this commercial?

Of course the effects are digital and the budget for making such a commercial must be quite high------anyone ever work on projects like that? Can you tell us what is involved in creating such a piece?

It's an excellent spot and inspirese me to take my editing, shooting and special effects to the next level.....very inspiring.

Probably used a hefty dose of 3D, CGI and compositing to get
it all together. Haven't seen it myself.

wow...sounds awesome...i should watch out for that commercial! if i catch it, ill tape it and upload it to the net for you all...

I love that commercial. Our local PBS station (Maryland) plays that one a lot. It is very good. Very imaginative. I suspect there is a ton of compositing work. I would love to know how it was done.

I worked on a series for The Learning Channel - all about 'iconic' American structures and the people who built them... we used CG all the way through - mixing it with the live action we filmed. The main thing was callibrating the lense correctly. We spent a morning with a distance chart, lines marked at 2m sepration making sure that the lense was callibrated at various angles and at the different distances.

When we filmed a contributor say at the Hoover Dam - with the Hoover Dam being contructed in CGI-created grainy b&w behind him the CG guys were then able to measure the true distance from the contrib to the dam - and thus create the image genuinely within the film image. The contrib of course was standing in front of a blue screen.

would love to see the gold-fish trailer - but we don't have PBS in Britain...

Steve

Steve,
Yes, I have seen that spot on our local PBS station several times. Great story in a matter of seconds. On the down side, I have also noticed that our local PBS station in Houston (perhaps nation wide) has started putting commercial breaks in after a program has started and before it ends. So much for commercial-free public television. I suspected it would only be a matter of time that PBS would go the way of all other television once they let the for-profit advertisers in.

Nick

Nick,

yeah here in NYC the same is done- you'll see sponsor spots by Kellogs or what-have-you- and then commercials.....Juicy Juice is another one....

the Goldfish spot is awesome- it definies what I'd like to be able to do with DV in the future.