Well you can’t keep a good canary down – Tommy returns in our latest spot with Publicis Dublin for GNI. This time around we find him a little outside his comfort zone as he gives us a candid sneak-peek behind the scenes of his latest promo – a typically safety-conscious ballad, delivered in uncharacteristically flamboyant fashion. For a canary who’s happiest perched on a bar-stool with nothing more than a mic and a banjo, one gets the feeling all this pop video shenanigans is just a bit much!

Taking a somewhat meta concept and running with it, we went to great lengths to make sure the usually invisible clutter of on-set and green-screen shooting were clearly visible here. The real-world paraphernalia typical of a live action shoot had to be carefully recreated and replicated in our digital environments. Boom mics, C stands, dolly tracks, soft boxes and even cabling and gaffer tape were all shaded, textured and rendered into each of the shots. For scenes featuring video assist monitors we rendered Tommy from a separate camera and added this newly rendered angle to the monitor screen shown in-shot. A final pass of subtle bumps, weave and handheld imperfection was applied to all of our CG cameras to help add a more natural feel to the candid behind-the-scenes shots.

As with the previous spots, the message here is an important one, but delivered in a playfully entertaining fashion – even if Tommy himself seems less than impressed with the final result!