Framestore's Christmas Highlights

A team of six heartwarming reindeer, one flying snowman, a life-saving plush bunny, several cute festive characters, and a host of hungry people cutting short classic Christmas traditions... it's Framestore's Christmas 2018 ad round-up newsletter!

McDonald's '#ReindeerReady' Behind the Scenes

Our single biggest Christmas commercials project this year has been #ReindeerReady – a 90-second, VFX-laden Christmas ad for McDonald’s, written by Leo Burnett and directed by James Rouse through Outsider. The tight production schedule for the project included a 7-day shoot, the creation of six life-like but expressive CG reindeer, and a large amount of digital background construction and enhancement involving intricate compositing work and digital matte paintings.

Watch the video above for some exciting behind-the-scenes action.

#ReindeerReady - Teaser

Agency: Leo Burnett
Prod: Framestore
Dir: Ben Cronin

#ReindeerReady

Agency: Leo Burnett
Prod: Outsider
Dir: James Rouse

Framestore’s Ben Cronin (VFX Supervisor) and CG Supervisors Ahmed Gharraph and Grant Walker led the project and had worked previously with James Rouse on Mog's Christmas Calamity (Britain's most loved Christmas advert of 2015). Like the Mog film, #ReindeerReady also required the design and animation of a CG character that would look realistic and be able to emotionally engage an audience – a rare and specialist skill Framestore has become synonymous with.

Leo Burnett and McDonald's approached Ben Cronin to direct a 10 second teaser film to be shown before #ReindeerReady was aired on TV. Framestore storyboarded, produced, and shot the teaser, as well as handling all the necessary VFX.

Meanwhile this Christmas...

It hasn’t all been reindeer-making for us this Christmas. Framestore’s Advertising department has also created a flying snowman for Barbour, a life-saving plush bunny for NRMA Insurance, several cute animated characters presenting EE mobile phone deals and a series of ads showing a host of people cutting short Christmas traditions to get to mouth-watering Waitrose food.

Framestore's Christmas Highlights

#ReindeerReady - Teaser

#ReindeerReady

Meanwhile this Christmas...

Waitrose 'Fast Forward'

EE 'Christmas specials'

Waitrose 'Carol Concert'

Barbour 'Maybe, just maybe'

Waitrose 'Mistletoe'

NRMA 'Don't drive naughty, drive nice'