Client: The Mattress Company
Agency: Cappelli Miles
Role: Creative, Production, VFX
Date: Fall 2021

THE PITCH

Space… the final frontier I’d always wanted to make the setting of a TV spot, but never had the chance… until the Mattress Company decided to pull the trigger on a wildcard idea: putting people “over the moon.” I was inspired by the Mattress Company’s logo and wanted to set a spot in a world where the harsh and desolate lunar landscape was contrasted by cozy, magical, and silly vignettes of people preparing to go to bed on the surface of the moon. I was visually inspired by the CHANEL spots “Ask for the Moon” and decided it was time to produce something just as magical. Only for a local mattress company instead.

PRE-PRODUCTION

I was setting myself up to use all my disciplines all in a single go. I wanted to do 8 “story” vignettes, each 15 seconds long featuring different bedtime characters. Then we could produce an additional 12 “billboard” spots that instead of telling a story would simply feature one of the bedtime cast in front of a large billboard that could promote different sales and events going on at the company. This would allow me to both tell a story but also be flexible to promote sales without requiring additional creative.

I planned to use my VFX background to produce these spots, which would require a sound stage greenscreen conversion, some clever camera work to integrate the CG and live-action segments, and of course a killer score. We had three months to produce everything, so it was time to prime the engines and set this lunar rocket on its way!

The storyboards provided the first clue to the kinds of camera angles and setups we’d need to pull off each spot.

The digital storyboards were brought into After Effects to create the timing cues we would need for production.

I wanted the moon’s surface to be as realistic as possible to contrast with the cozy bedtime scenes we’d be incorporating. This was the reference sheet I used for lighting.

I created some tests in Blender to showcase different camera angles, positions, and lighting setups we could use at the soundstage. This helped us figure out how to set up our key directional light.

PRODUCTION

After creating the storyboards for the entire sequence, it was time to film them. Over the course of three days in a small warehouse studio, we built the greenscreen, loaded it up with several beds, and filmed the cast, capturing both their “A” story spots and the “B” version that was just a simple plate for the billboard edits.

Each spot required its own set of challenges, like the above when we were trying to simulate low gravity by having the actress leap from a ladder onto the bed. It required me and the crew to hold the bed together, it wasn’t built for that kind of stress!

POST-PRODUCTION

Now the real work begins! Now we had to turn the greenscreen footage into the moon, including matching camera angles, lighting, shadows, and more. Each spot presented a different story which required different strategies, though there were some commonalities. The steps to producing each spot was as follows:

Edit the footage match the storyboards (Davinici Resolve)

Import footage, align virtual camera to footage, then create shadow casting objects to match footage (Blender)

Initial placement of the bed in the test camera scene

Note the bed is floating off the ground as perspective is baked into the shot

Move bed to align with ground plane and camera perspective

Create simple shapes that will cast shadows onto the 3D ground

Shadows help ground the bed into the scene and help it not "float"

Import the footage and matching virtual camera, align moon geometry to shadow projector, add in virtual light source to match footage (Blender) and export back to Resolve.

The ending logo was a combination of a CG moon rendered in Blender and a 2D vectorized version of the Mattress Company logo.

Fireworks on the moon? Why not? This one was a fun sequence to composite, featuring a blue themed version of the billboard.

Roto + Key the footage and remove spill (Davinci Resolve)

Build the surface of the moon to match the footage including lighting and procedural moon textures (Blender)

The landscape geometry and particle systems (Geonodes) to place the rocks

Using multiple landscape layers created a sense of depth

Harsh lighting and the earthrise helped sell the illusion

The combination of procedural and actual lunar textures helped create a convincing landscape

Some shots took special considerations, like removing the studio lights and mapping the lunar surface onto the boy’s helmet. This is absolutely one of my favorite scenes.

Some shots were very wide and high angles, requiring a matching wide angle landscape to be created too.

MUSIC

Another project featuring the incredibly talented Dave Dexter came to fruition. Just like each 15s spot had its own unique story to tell, Dave wrote variations on his “Over the Moon” theme that made each 15s spot sound distinct from the others. Some used a tinkerbox, some used a choir, some used a live violinist to supplement the digital orchestra. They all turned out amazing!

FINAL RESULT

The campaign I built expanded beyond TV/Digital and went into billboards, print collateral, truck wraps, and website takeovers.

Summary

I got the chance to take a local mattress company and send them orbital, an experience I’ll never forget. A lot of careful attention to detail and economic use of a smaller budget still produced a national-quality TV campaign for a firm that only had three stores. That’s what I love to do… send people over the moon with amazing and memorable creative direction.

The Mattress Company - "Over the Moon"