CINEMARK motion graphics

Céu created, directed, and produced several motion graphics films for the Cinemark movie theater complex. All the films were developed in collaboration with Creative Director Cibar Ruiz, focusing on how to best explore the possibilities of large-screen projection.

Comments from Céu:

With over 500 theaters, Cinemark is the largest Brazilian film exhibition company. Thus, “Hey Hey Hey,” the safety film I directed in 2014, was undoubtedly the most-watched film in Brazil during this season. The film is shown at every screening, meaning that at least 40 million people have seen it over the course of a year.

For a long time, Cinemark Brazil produced its motion graphics films with CG-3D animation. One of the problems is that these films are screened before Hollywood blockbusters, whose cutting-edge CG-3D technology, I would argue, is unrivaled by what Brazil can produce. In other words, Cinemark Brazilian audiences inevitably perceive the motion graphics as inferior in quality to the films that precede them.
So, my advice to my client, when creating our films, was to seek more creative and original solutions, with mixed styles and techniques, as well as more artistically abstract visuals, rather than the false realism and sometimes cold experience of traditional CG-3D. Furthermore, after many years of always offering the same style, it was time to refresh and offer something different to the audience. With this in mind, my team and I produced the four films you can watch here.

For the Five Hundred Theaters motion graphics and the film Hey Hey Hey, we opted for hand-drawn animation with flat but striking colors and contrasts. For all Cinemark Brazil films, we used flat black or white backgrounds, which created a wonderful spatial feel when projected on the big screen.

The Five Hundred Theaters motion graphic is based on the representation of film genres: action, adventure, fantasy, science fiction, musical, comedy, thriller, etc. But again, I made it more as abstract representations of the genres, rather than the usual standard clichés.

FLIX Experience was created by combining the silhouette of a contemporary dancer dancing alongside solid, flat-colored three-dimensional shapes created as abstractions of the letters F-L-I-X themselves. The interplay of these elements was developed like the choreography of an imaginary action-adventure film.

To synchronize the slow-motion dancer with the beat of the music, we played a recording of the beat, isolated and sped up, to film the live action. We then edited the animation and live action together to the correct beat, and Fabio Goes, the musician, made the final arrangements based on the final composite image.

To ensure success throughout the entire process, I used the old bar sheet method, from storyboarding and live action filming to final editing and finalizing the soundtrack.

To celebrate Cinemark Brazil’s fifteenth anniversary, I suggested butterflies. This is because they can be identified with Brazilian nature, as well as with the light from movie projectors, which brings life, magic, and movement through the air. The butterfly wings were created with a hand-drawn crayon texture to give them a more abstract appearance rather than a realistic image. I hand-drew each frame of the butterfly’s main movement, which was later copied by CG animator Fernando Fracaroli. I created the animation as a direct animation, with a very loose flow, to avoid the mechanical flight typical of most CG butterflies.

For “Hey Hey Hey,” we blended solid colors with real crayon textures. The color palette was inspired by the work of Bauhaus artist Johannes Itten. To explore the idea of ​​cinematic diversity, I created over 30 distinct characters, each with unique designs and animation timing, representing the most popular themes in contemporary films, such as heroism, space fantasy, and superheroes. I worked with ten assistants and two animators, in addition to myself. Gil Caserta created the backgrounds in solid colors stylized in 3D CG, while Flavio Castello worked on my visual effects composition, which then became a stereoscopic film.

So, what you’re seeing here isn’t the final result, which requires stereoscopic projection, popularly known as 3D projection, which requires special glasses to view.

The result, on the big screen, is truly successful and effective in communicating its safety instructions clearly and cheerfully. Fabio Goes, once again, did the soundtrack, and I have no other comment to make than: – Listen!

Céu D’Ellia