London, November 20, 2009—The brutal impact the global warming is having on the polar ice caps is illustrated in a shocking new ad created by Mother and directed by Daniel Kleinman on behalf of the climate-change charity Plane Stupid. The ad was made on a shoestring using a volunteer crew. It opens a shot of a city skyline, where some strange objects can be seen falling from the sky. Gradually the viewer is able to see that the objects are, in fact, polar bears. As the ad continues, the bears meet their brutal deaths, crashing against buildings, leaving a trail of blood and landing on cars.
The aim of the campaign is to make people consider the impact that taking even short flights can have on carbon emissions. It was inspired by the fact that an average European flight produces 400kg of carbon, which is the same weight as an average female polar bear.
MPC created the computer-generated polar bears, using proprietary tools including PAPI which simulates falling and collisions in a realistic way. The fur was created using its proprietary fur software “Furtility”, which allows it to move in a lifelike way.
Director Daniel Kleinman said: “We sourced all the polar bears in Wardour Street in London, they live in a virtual zoo at MPC. No bear was alive when we dropped them from a great height and no pixels were hurt during filming. We did have to mop up the blood though.”
Jake Mengers, VFX supervisor at MPC, said: “The sequence used computer-generated ‘rag dolls’ which emulate the actual skeletal structure of bears once they were falling as we wanted them to, the computer-generated ‘puppets’ were overlaid with hand animation to allow us to refine their anatomy, tweaking subtleties to make their movements more believable and using nCloth simulation to make the flesh wobble on impact.”

Post Production Company: MPC; Post Production Producer: Scott Griffin; VFX Supervisors: Jake Mengers; 3D VFX Team: Vicky Osborn, Ahmed Gharraph, James Bailey, Kieran Belshaw, Georgios Chevourim, Richard Clegg, Andreas Graichen,
Mark Harrison, Alex Kim, Adam Leary, Jorge Montiel, Tom O’Flaherty, Wayne Simmons, Stephen Murphy, Christoph Schinko, Ashley Bernes; 2D VFX Team: Suzanne Jandu, Kelly Bruce, Steve Davis, Greg Howe-Davies, Alasdair McNeill,
Stephen Newbold

Jake Mengers (UK), having studied 3D Animation at ICARI, Montreal, Jake began his career in 1995 at London’s Moving Picture Company, originally using Alias Power Animator and later Maya when it arrived on the scene. In 1999/2000 Jake freelanced for The Mill, Double Negative and Framestore. It was at Framestore that Jake subsequently settled for five years before returning to MPC in 2006 where he continues to work for the 3D Commercials Department as creative director.