NETAPP Campaign

3D live action mixed media geek nerd cloud 2D

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– NETAPP: For The Love Of Cloud

NetApp’s passion is in the work they do improving the cloud. And it shows in all the benefits you get from choosing NetApp.
But let’s face it. They’re cloud engineers. They’re coders... geeks. Who aren’t used to showing their emotions all that much.
On the outside, that love for the cloud might manifest as a fistbump or half hearted ‘wooop’. But on the inside... inside their heads... that’s where the real excitement is.

Our goal was to showcase the contrast within these persons: where though they may appear focused and composed on the surface, inside they feel a deep sense of satisfaction and fulfillment when solving a challenging problem.

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THE NEEDS

The purpose was to highlight the humanity and emotions behind the engineers, who may be perceived as emotionless or insensitive in their work. Our goal was to showcase the contrast within these persons: where though they may appear focused and composed on the surface, inside they feel a deep sense of satisfaction and fulfillment when solving a challenging problem

THE CHALLENGE

The project was certainly one of the most challenging and complex in terms of production. The combination of live-action and 3D animation required a diverse set of skills and a high level of technical expertise, both from our internal team and external partners. The process involved everything from shooting on set to managing the large 3D files. For example, the 3D animation itself required a rough 2D animation.

– Lorenzo Levrero - Creative Director

Our three geeks

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THE CREATIVE SOLUTION

We started from this contrast, depicting the static external world and the dynamic internal emotions. This approach allowed us to create a distinct visual division between the live-action and 3D animation.
The fact that we had three videos allowed us to have fun in the character study phase, with each video having a slightly different theme.

The 3 environments and all the objects were chosen by Lorenzo so that they could be partly real and partly modeled in 3D. There’s been intense lighting work on set: we wanted everything to be in its right place. We could see a preview on screen of the simulated environments to see if they worked, and then it was fun to do the set design in 3D, giving it the photorealistic look.