Week 1 - Concept
The Project: Teams of five will create short commercials based on the prompt "High Technology," and present work in progress every week to mentors from Harbor Picture Company and the Electric Theater Company.
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My Team: The Oura Farmers: Wren Pellant (Compositing), Noelle Robertson (Look Dev and Lighting), Gracie Szymanski (FX), Max Jokinen (FX), and Cae Parkhill (FX)
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Our Product: Oura Rings
An Oura Ring from an official commercial
Posts from the Oura Ring Instagram
Concept for the commercial:
We decided to make a commercial for Oura Rings, and we wanted our ad to focus on showing the different functions of the ring, such as its ability to analyze sleep, track menstrual and fertility cycles, sense stress, and track exercise. After watching many other smart ring commercials and researching the Oura Brand, we decided to show these functions through abstract, symbolic, minimalistic environments, with the ring traveling through each of these environments.
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​Smart Ring Commercials for Inspiration:
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A section of the Oura Ring Website highlighting ring abilities
Rough plan for commercial: ​
5 shots in total
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Shot 1: An establishing shot of the ring
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Shot 2: Heartrate - The ring falls into water, and the bubbles coming off of it pulsate like a heartbeat
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Shot 3: Cycle Tracking - The ring drops into a floral scene and rolls down a ramp, with flowers blooming around it
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Shot 4: Sleep - The ring falls into a loose cloth and rolls around, then the cloth is pulled taut and the ring is launched up
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Shot 5: The ring moves upwards in the air, breaks apart to show it's inner technology, and then comes back together and moves to form the O in OMNI (our alternative name to the Oura Ring for this project)
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Our storyboards for the Oura ad
Shot 4 - Cloth:
Three of the planned shots for our commercial are FX heavy shots (The water, the flowers, and the cloth). We decided that each of the three FX artists on the team would be mainly in charge of one shot to help with organization. I will be mainly in charge of shot 4, where the ring interacts with a cloth.
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Cloth Research and Reference:
The Oura ring interacts with cloth in some of their actual ads, usually using a cloth that looks like bedsheets or a comforter to evoke sleep. I wanted to do something similar, but not exactly identical to these ads, while also still keeping the shot very simple and clean.
The concept that we eventually settled on for shot 4 is that the ring with fall into a folding, moving cloth. It will roll around for a moment, and then the cloth will pull taut, forcing the ring upwards to transition into the next shot.
I worked on some basic tests in Houdini for this effect, to visualize what it might look like.
Cloth FX References
A color frame from the FX test for the cloth simulation in the ad
FX Test for cloth simulation
Using AI for concept generation:
I used Gemini to generated concept images for the scene. I had a decent image in my mind of what I wanted the scene to look like: a light purple smart ring rolling through a purple, bedsheet-like fabric, and using AI was very helpful for quickly seeing what that could look like.
I did struggle some with getting results that portrayed the image I was imagining-- the ring was almost always standing upright, often it was floating above the cloth instead of lying in the cloth, and there were frequently extra effects and elements added to the scene, which I wanted to be minimalistic and sleek. I got a few images in the end that did capture the look and feeling I was imagining, and they helped a lot in sharing my ideas with the rest of the team, and when working on the FX tests.
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AI Concept photos for cloth sim and prompting
We are now working on finishing up the pitch deck and pulling together our final references. The official pitch will happen in just a few days, and I look forward to getting feedback on our ideas, as well as getting into more R&D for the effects next week!
Our pitch deck!