Directed by Dougal Wilson, the new Stella Artois commercial takes us through a beautifully shot bicycle race in the Alps, where two brothers race in memory of their ‘Papa’. Lowe was the agency behind the job, with Ciska Faulkner from Blink in charge of production. MPC provided telecine and 2D compositing for the spot.

‘Perfection has its price’ is the strap line for the new Stella Artois commercial that starts with the two brothers getting ready for the race, looking at the picture of their father. Staying in front of the peloton, they race through the Alps on their tandem until a puncture stops them next to ‘Bar Du Sport’. Distracted by an inviting Stella Artois, they stop to discover another passion of Papa’s.

To create the final sequence, an unusual post pipeline was designed starting with a technical grade. To retain detailed control of the look of the imagery and assure a more natural brightness to the film the team used logarithmic colour space. These log images were then transferred into Flame, where mountain and sky layers were composited in to further reference the dramatic Alpine environment. Green screen backgrounds were replaced and crowd elements enhance some scenes.

For the final grade, Dougal wanted to experiment with film colour space, and work from print. It was not possible to print the rushes selection and do the post from print because of green screen and crowd replacement shots. It was decided to grade the negative using a virtual contrast curve to emulate a print. This is the same workflow that is used on movies. At the end of the post the final master was printed with a very predictable result. This print was put on the telecine to give it a final look.

There are 90, 60, 40 and 30 second versions of the commercial which is on air from October 3rd in Canada, US and Europe.