Christopher Schlierf performed as a director for Framestore on their production of a Panasonic commercial titled 'Hollywood to Your Home.' The incredible media hype that surrounded the project added high stakes and expectations. Nothing short but a blockbuster-level commercial. The technical challenge was to be the lead of the world’s first HDR commercial from production to post-production.
Together with the agency Brave in London Christopher Schlierf began with a rough idea of what direction he wanted to take the commercial to go, before production began. So he envisioned four separate scenes throughout the commercial, all taken from the most popular film genres: historical, noir, science fiction, and superhero. Each would have an individual aesthetic feel with varying color schemes and textures in order to showcase the exceptional fidelity of Panasonic’s 4K televisions. The historical film scene was used to show the TV’s capability to project natural skin tones, a dark 70ies film noir scene was built to shot true blacks and deep contrast, a spectacular sci-fi scene was created to display every detail of the OLED screen with explosions and flying debris and a thrilling superhero action scene should show the million colors in a breathtaking sunset above the New York skyline.
Beginning in pre-production, Christopher Schlierf scouted locations in South Africa with the art department, designed costumes for each scene to share the vision with the production designer to execute them, and cast the performers. During filming itself, the challenge was not only to command hundreds of people across four massive sets but to squeeze the whole production into 3 shooting days. Despite the many moving parts involved across the commercial’s four sets, Christopher Schlierf personally planned the stunt sections of the commercials, personally creating floor plans in 3D to choreograph the action, the placement of fire and explosions, and more. Together with DOP Paul Gilpin and a high speed unit, he used pioneering technology including Panasonic’s first HDR camera system and Phantom Flex cameras that allowed them to capture 1,000 frames per second, thereby ensuring the commercial boasted the same visual quality the Panasonic televisions do. In post-production, Christopher Schlierf was working closely with Framestore’s visual effects team to perfect the color grading in HDR and more, while also collaborating with the composer to achieve the right sound. The campaign was used for years and was running in every media store on Panasonic televisions. It even won 'best cinematography' award at Cyclops in South Africa.
Christopher Schlierf
Director
+49 160 - 81 77 648 INFO /AT/ CHRISTOPHERSCHLIERF.COM
