Mann Made Media 2011 Lookback from Mic Mann on Vimeo.

When BMW needed a media event for the announcement of their sponsorship of Springbok rugby they looked to Mann Made Media for a unique creative concept and world-class execution.

The agency developed a strategy that sought to parallel the thrill of driving a BMW with the adrenalin rush that a Springbok rugby player experiences when running onto the field. This thought was contained in the creative theme, ‘From Tarmac to Turf’. To dramatise this, the agency teamed up its most enthusiastic rugby jocks together with its most gifted technical boffs. The result was a carefully designed and precisely staged audio and visual installation that recreated the visceral experience of walking down a tunnel alive with the sounds of anticipation, and then running into a packed stadium that explodes with a panorama of passionate supporters. Using superb sound design, bespoke technology motion detection, and a four metre tall, 180 degree plasma wall of tens of thousands of CGI fans to achieve the effect, the announcement of this momentous sponsorship scored some excellent reviews with the media.

“Mann Made Media delivered a world-class experience to the media and VIP guests who attended the event,” explains Guy Kilfoil, General Manager: Communications & Public Affairs at BMW South Africa. “BMW is a premium brand which focuses on passion and innovation and both of these characteristics were a visceral part of the creative execution delivered on the day. So believable was the stadium experience that even some of the Springbok players in attendance commented on its authenticity.”

Smartload gives the South African public the opportunity to buy and sell airtime at a discounted rate, which is a breakthrough in airtime sales, but getting the market to understand exactly how to use the service is challenging. MMM proposed a piece of “edutainment”, with a very local “Mzansi” flavour, to engage potential customers using familiar situations and characters.

South African 3D animation studios tend to work with short-format productions (usually 30 seconds). Longer form animation work is frequently outsourced to studios in other countries, because of the intense amount of work (and therefore cost) that goes into 3D animation. Rather than pass up the challenge, however, Mann Made Media made use of some groundbreaking technology to make longer length 3D animation more achievable.

The Smartload project involved a huge amount of spoken dialogue, so the Mann Made Media team used facial motion capture with live actors in a studio environment. We shot the actors’ faces with four cameras and then brought the footage into a motion capture environment to track the lips and facial nuances. This method allowed us to rapidly generate realistic animation from live performances.

After just 4 months of work, the full-length animated video is almost complete – all that is left to do is light the scenes, render, and add some sound design and music. We are very excited to be launching this project, so watch this space for the final movie.

Of course, moving always brings some temporary inconvenience. From Thursday, 25 November 12 noon, our old office phone number will become unavailable. However, please don’t hesitate to contact us using the cellphone numbers provided on our contacts page.

Plans have already been put into place to ensure that Jobs already in progress are completed on time without undue interruption from the moving process.

While some finishing touches will be ongoing for a little while to come, we will be operating from our new office officially from Monday 29 November.

The theme of ‘2010 Excellence’ sought to align the achievements of the nation hosting the World Cup Soccer tournament with the achievements of the Sasol departments and business units in respect of each award category.

Mann Made Media created a series of exhilarating animations using the flag symbol as the device to link the excellence of the awards to the extraordinary achievements of the nation over this period.

The power and the prestige of the awards were further enhanced by carefully scripted links for the MC connecting the thematic link to 2010 Excellence.

The evening far exceeded the expectations of Sasol, and allowed the Mann Made Media team to bring their diverse talents together to achieve a new level of experiential excellence for an exciting new client.