C4D For HBO’s Hall of Fame

...package for HBO’s highly anticipated The 25th Anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert. The promos are currently airing on HBO and show viewers the names of the legendary rock stars that will be performing during the concert special, and demonstrate the advanced functionality in CINEMA 4D with a composite of highly stylized, 3D photo-realistic images that convey the massive scale of the all-star lineup. A link to the promos is available at: www.monkeyhead.tv.

The 25th Anniversary of the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame Concert airs as a four-hour special and features performances from musical legends such as Aretha Franklin, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger, Sting, Simon & Garfunkel, Jeff Beck, and many others. The actual historic Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary Concerts took place over two nights at Madison Square Garden on October 29th and 30th, 2009. HBO is producing and airing the broadcast on November 29 about the two-night concerts as a tribute to the legendary musical extravaganza. 

Josh Sahley, founder and creative director at Monkeyhead, commented that HBO tasked the studio with creating promos that would amplify viewer interest in one of the greatest concert gatherings of the world’s most exalted rock stars ever assembled – many of them Hall of Fame inductees. HBO also informed Sahley that the use of existing photographs, video footage or music cues of any of the performers was not permissible. The studio was given three weeks to complete the project.

“Monkeyhead was thrilled to take on the creative challenge of emphasizing the individual talents of so many of the world’s greatest rock icons in a fresh and innovative way without relying on existing footage or music. We came up with the idea of finding one instrument-related image that personified each artist as a springboard to create a motion graphics treatment,” explained Sahley. “CINEMA 4D is our core 3D software package and it was used throughout every aspect of the campaign’s content creation process. We especially appreciate its ease of use for meeting a wide range of motion graphics needs – from photo real product and location projects to kid-friendly, toon-shaded designs. We knew we could rely on the MoGraph and NET Render modules for the Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary Concerts and we pushed both to the maximum since they make normally complicated procedures simple and stress-free while providing us with endless creative and time-saving options.”

“We are delighted that CINEMA 4D played a central role in providing Monkeyhead with flexible and reliable tools to bring its creative vision to this extraordinarily high-profile project to life,” says Paul Babb, President and CEO, MAXON U.S. “The team at Monkeyhead continues to push the creative boundaries of the software in new directions even when they are working against tight deadline challenges – a testament to the power and stability of our software.”

The creative team at Monkeyhead began the creative process by doing research on each of the performers to identify appropriate images and work up storyboard concepts. They then “jumped into” CINEMA 4D to explore camera moves and model all the instruments. “We decided to build all the models as photo-realistic 3D images in CINEMA 4D to realistically and meticulously capture the unique characteristics of each artist, ranging from Aretha Franklin’s vintage vocal microphones, the beat-up grain pattern on Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen’s wood Telecaster guitar, U2’s drum set layout, a piano keyboard to represent Stevie Wonder, and much more. In addition, we created a graphic ‘expression mark’ to punctuate the explosive line-up represented by a photo-realistic guitar bursting into flames."

“The functionality in the MoGraph module offers an incredibly dynamic range of tools to create motion graphics and advanced features like Global Illumination and Caustics further allowed us to achieve the desired degree of realism. When we showed HBO the final spot they asked which images we created and which ones were pulled from existing sources because they couldn’t believe the photo-realistic quality we had accomplished,” added Sahley.

Once the look and feel of the shots had been established, Monkeyhead dropped them into CINEMA 4D’s NET Render for Multi-Pass rendering on 8-core Mac Pros and 8-core Macs dual-booted with PC, then brought them into Adobe After Effects for final compositing. This process was repeated for each musical element. “Unlike other packages that claim they have networked rendering, CINEMA 4D’s NET Render was extremely simple to set up and gave us enhanced flexibility and creative control to experiment with transitions and to achieve a stylized, 3D photo-realistic film-like look. This, coupled with its seamless integration into other third-party apps, played a major role in letting us complete the project within the short deadline.” 

Monkeyhead has recently used CINEMA 4D to complete several other notable projects, including design-oriented work for Red Bull, photo-realistic commercial work for Ghiradelli and photo-realistic special effects in the theatrically-released Eschelon Conspiracy.

About Monkeyhead
Monkeyhead was launched in Santa Monica, California, in 2006 by well-known Los Angeles motion design artist and creative director Josh Sahley. By delivering consistently innovative projects and focusing on total dedication to an A-list roster of ad agency and consumer brand clientele, the company quickly built a solid track record and reputation. Since moving to a larger studio in Culver City in 2008, under Sahley’s creative direction and through his management approach pairing specific artistic teams for individual assignments, Monkeyhead continues to evolve its style in delivering groundbreaking commercial spots, broadcast show packages, branded entertainment, movie/TV titles and visual effects sequences. Additional information on Monkeyhead is available at www.monkeyhead.com.