Rainforest Alliance

Pessimism is out. We’re all in.

And boy were we in!

Directed by Max Joseph and produced by Kode Media, ‘We’re All In’ is a promotional video campaign for the Rainforest Alliance to tell the world that despite the negative little voices in our head, between the millions of us who want to make a difference, we can help to create a better world.

But hang on, who’s going to give that frog laser eyes? Yes Grizzle, environmentally conscious animation studio! Courtesy of Kode Media, we were invited to create and composite lasers into a collection of shots of the Rainforest Alliance’s famous frog sticker, functioning as a symbolic data dump into our own subconscious of just how we can all make a difference to the environment, despite our own internal doubts.

On the face of it not a huge job, especially considering the director wanted a retro, semi-cartoony aesthetic to the lasers (for that family friendly PG rating). Once the amazing team at Black Kite Studios had completed the colour grade we were sent ProRes footage to start tracking and layering in the aforementioned lasers, without having to worry about working in Log colour space.

For the most part on this project we used Video Copilot’s Saber, a nifty little After Effects plugin made specifically for lasers, energy beams and the like! Set your start and end points, adjust the parameters until appropriately non threatening and off you go. Couple this with tracking data and you’re already onto something. But we’re about more than just that. With the initial beams aligned we enhanced them with a few extra tricks courtesy of Maxon’s Magic Bullet Suite. Using a variety of glows to create the bloom and some keyframed exposure and colour correction to mimic a camera adjusting to the bright light really helped the lasers feel like a real part of the world (to the extent we had to dial it back a bit as we were beginning to lose some of the slightly dodgy, retro vibe).

This went relatively cleanly, and without too much tweaking, until we ended up staring straight down the barrel of a frogs laser gaze. Saber couldn’t quite create this sense of depth and after some short experimentation, 3D lasers proved to be the best way forward. Using C4D we imported the existing footage and tracking data, created two lumpy tubes approximating laser beams and launched them directly into the camera within C4D. Lumpy tubes having served their purpose we were able to import these back into After Effect where we reapplied most of the same trickery to nail the desired effect!

Overall this went down a storm and the final edit, at time of writing, has already amassed a comfy 1.5 Million views through YouTube alone.

The Rainforest Alliance understand that for nature to thrive, communities must thrive, and they are actively promoting a regenerative agriculture, good forest management, human rights, and rural livelihoods in the world’s most critically important natural landscapes.

#WeAreAllIn #RainforestAlliance