MPC Shanghai partners with Jonathan Gurvit + Filmate to create an underwater party with Neymar for the Harbin Beer World Cup campaign

MPC Shanghai carried out post production on the recent Harbin Beer campaign, which was produced by Filmate Shanghai and directed by Jonathan Gurvit.

MPC were tasked to design multiple environments for two commercials for Harbin’s big summer World Cup campaign that were shot around the globe.

VIEW SPOT ONE

VIEW SPOT TWO

For this World Cup campaign Harbin enlisted help from one of the best footballers in the world Neymar, for the two football themed spots and it was MCP’s task to bring everything to life.

They shot the spots in Paris on a green screen and the rest of the commercials were shot on location in Malaysia including Neymar’s on screen partner Lee RonHao, who was shot in studio on green.

The stadium and crowd are all CG, apart from the Mascot shots, this part was shot for real in plates and stitched together. We made all the animations and advertising boards in post. We shot on a small piece of grass in the studio, extended in post and transformed the scene into a full world cup scenario.

MPC created camera moves for all the shots where the two talents appeared together so it felt more fluid.

The second commercial “Underwater” opens on a yacht with Chinese singer Li RongHao asking what could be better than being on a boat relaxing in the sun – Neymar responds by leading everyone into the water and diving into the sea from the boat. Transformed to an underwater environment – almost unlike anything you have ever seen – where Neymar plays football, a DJ playing tunes and partygoers intermingle with mermaids and turtles.

Barry Greaves, MPC Shanghai’s VFX Supervisor said: “This project was one of the most technical I’ve ever encountered. Shooting underwater obviously adds complexity to every shot. It’s harder to capture what you want as you cannot move as fast and for each take have a limited amount of time before people’s air runs out. This was a huge coordination task during filming.”

Credits –

VFX Producer: Chris Li