Beagle Street / Trousers / Behind the Scenes

The launch of the new Beagle Street life insurance campaign emphasises the bond between one man and his dog which has been devised by VCCP creatives Javier Romartinez & Stephen Misir. Highlighting the respective devotion between both owner and pet in their clever script for ‘Trousers', Jeremy is more than a doting pet in warning his owner John of the dangers in everyday garments. In the 40 second TVC Jeremy informs his owner that he has taken the necessary precaution of the threat of trouser trips by removing them all from his wardrobe.

We were called on by Rattling Stick's Kleinman and VCCP to create the fully CGI talking dog. With the bar being raised very high for fully CGI animals to look ever so photoreal in recent years, the task of creating photoreal animals that have certain human characteristics, such as talking, can make it more difficult as we all know - real dog's don't talk - and the illusion can get shattered.

Turning Jeremy into a talking dog required a balance between the complexities of human speech and the limitations of the canine muzzle. Jeremy’s voice actor was on set too and was filmed as reference to help with this balance.

Developing the grooming of the fur required painting multiple layers of attributes to control the overall look of the hair over the body of the dog. A lengthy and painstaking process, but the end result was absolutely worth the commitment.

On set supervision was critical to ensure seemless CG dog and live action integration and hence a tight team from Freefolk was assembled to capture and obtain all necessary information.

Jeremy is based on a real dog who was also on set. Having the physical reference meant we could match everything from the proportions, textures and groom of the fur to the real dog, which is invaluable when creating photo realistic CGI. It also meant that any lighting changes could be matched to actual visual reference for the final comps and grade.