Step By Step: Heineken Taps a Cyborg Keg

This is not your typical beer commercial—no rowdy bar buddies are shown tapping a keg. Instead, Heineken has elected to advertise its Draught Keg beer by using what appears to be an old-fashioned flapper in platform heels.
But with her white, almost Kabuki make-up, she''s hardly an ordinary leggy blonde. She''s a cyborg, and her torso opens up to reveal a Draught Keg, which then floats outward. Robotic chrome arms unfold from her sides, and she taps the keg and pours the perfect glass of beer. Ultimately, she splits apart, and multiplies into identical triplets who appear equally ready to party. “It''s as if a beautiful woman opened a keg and had two of her friends show up,” says Aaron Powell, who supervised the spot''s computer animation at Digital Domain in Venice, Calif.

Heineken is advertising Draught Keg beer as a futuristic delivery system. “We didn''t want her to look robo-tech,” Powell says. “She looks real, and then she transforms.” It''s a somewhat classic sci-fi vision of a cyborg Powell says. “The way her robot arms come out has kind of a Jules Verne feel to it.” He credits director Carl Rinsch with the spot''s unique approach. “If this was a tame commercial, he wouldn''t be interested!”

Powell began by doing a previsualization in Autodesk 3ds Max. “I used the biped system that''s built into Max. I had a color-coordinated doll so that the clients could see how she looked in motion and where the camera needed to be. The previs also showed the pacing of the cuts.”

Although armed with this tight previs, the director naturally wanted additional camera angles once shooting began on Digital Domain''s greenscreen stage. “We shot the same action four different ways so that he could get some Interesting edits,” Powell says. “He''d turn to me on set and ask, ‘How much pain will this cause you guys?'' We knew we''d have to open up her torso anyway to have this keg come out, so we said ‘Go for it.'' Most of the shots are straight on, but there''s a big panning shot where the camera tracked around her. You really see that the keg floats out in front.”

Because the camerawork would need to be tracked later at Digital Domain, tracking markers were copiously employed. “We put bright orange markers on our greenscreen in the background, and C-stands with tennis balls on them in the foreground,” Powell explains. “Because we''d have to track CG onto her torso, we also put tracking dots on her clavicles and up and down the sides of her outfit. We had to make sure that the CG arms would stick to her.”

The actress was supposed to remain live action even when her torso was transformed with CG, so a virtual stand-in needed to be built. To acquire the necessary data for that, Digital Domain had Burbank, Calif.-based Gentle Giant Studios bring their mobile scanning rig to the set. Laser scans of the actress were made. “We just needed to get geometry,” Powell says. “We didn''t scan for surfaces. Scans are great for reference, but cleaning up the data is what costs you. We spent about five days tracing over the scans to make a version of her with the correct proportions.”

This helped Powell''s team track the actress'' body, which he says was definitely a challenge. “So many were close-ups, making it difficult to find markers on a greenscreen background 30ft. away. Unless the markers are the size of basketballs, they just disappear.” Digital Domain uses Boujou software from 2d3 for tracking.

“Once we completed the tracking, it came down to the performance of the CG arms,” Powell says. “How would they come out of her body? Would they be robotic or graceful?” Digital Domain used 3ds Max and the V-Ray renderer from Chaos Group to make the chrome robotic arms appear convincing. “V-Ray is perfectly designed for rendering metallic surfaces,” Powell says. “If you want more reflectivity, you just turn it up. Except for some brightness contrast and color correction to grade the whole image, what you see in this spot are basically raw renders. We had shot really good HDRs on set so we had our lighting down.” To integrate the CG with the live action, Powell made sure that the actress was reflected in the chrome joints of the CG arms. “In one close-up shot as the keg comes forward and her hands reach out to grab it, you can see her arm in the ball joint moving towards it.”

The key moment—certainly from Heineken''s perspective—is when the actress opens the Draught Keg. “In some shots it''s live action, and some shots we had to match a CG keg perfectly,” Powell says. “And if a live-action keg didn''t have the right amount of frost on it, we had to add it. One of our compositors painted a keg black, put dry ice on top of it and filmed it. We reapplied that back onto the keg in the shot. In other cases, we digitally added frost and water beads. We had to come up with some cool tricks to get that sweaty can look. We had some texture maps of water drops and a frost pass, which we dropped in. Since we''d already tracked each one of the live-action kegs in each scene, we just kissed those maps in over the top of the live-action kegs.”

The frost that poured from the cyborg''s torso was another matter. Digital Domain simulated that frost using a plug-in particle system for 3ds Max called Fume FX. Made by Motion Media, Fume FX a liquid dynamics tool for simulating smoke and flame. “Even our Houdini guys were amazed by it,” Powell says. “Their stuff is usually as powerful as a sledge hammer, but sometimes you just need a jeweler''s hammer.”

The final piece of animation was the beer itself in CG glasses, because the decision was made not to risk pouring anything on set. “The CG beer was a cool trick that one of our TDs did in 3ds Max,” Powell says. “He rigged up a system to create a fluid layer and a foam layer, and used spring controllers so that as the glass moved left and right, the beer would actually rock.”

All of these elements were composited and color corrected using Digital Domain''s Sci-Tech Award-winning software Nuke, along with Autodesk Flame.
The spot was produced at 2K and then an HD extraction was done. “We don''t do anything at standard def any more,” Powell says.

The time pressures were palpable because Heineken''s peak selling season was underway during production. Powell estimates that the schedule, from previs to completion, was about eight weeks. But this sassy cyborg quickly became
an icon for Heineken. “Their website is built around this girl,” Powell says. “You can even upload a photo of your face and put it on a dancing robot.”

Credit Roll

Director: Carl Erik Rinsch

Agency: Berlin Cameron United, New York

Agency Producer: Cheri Anderson

Scanning: Gentle Giant, Burbank California



For Digital Domain

VFX Supervisor: Jay Barton

CG Supervisor: Aaron Powell

Producer: Chris Fieldhouse

VFX Coordinator: Stephanie Escobar

CG Artists: Carlos Aguiano, Robert Valdivia, Marc Perrera, and Justin Lloyd

Compositors/Flame Artists: Dave Stern, Pilon Lectez, Krista Benson

Tracking/Roto: Scott Edelstien, Montu Jariwala, Hilery Copeland, Josh Johnson