Dive into the world of mermaids at nightfall with Wet n Wild®’s new Midnight Mermaid virtual reality experience. Enjoy the thrills and entertainment of a 3D underwater journey featuring sea life, mermaids, and makeup!
Groove Jones worked with Wet n Wild® to bring their latest brand concept to life by creating an underwater VR experience. The Midnight Mermaid collection is inspired by the world of mermaids in a context that you rarely get to see or experience: Nightfall.
The client’s goal, as a brand, was to create an experience that is visually arresting, breaks through, and ultimately resonates with the viewers – VR has the potential to do all of that.
“Creating a compelling experience for our Gen Z and Millennial consumer is key. They’re bombarded with different kinds of media and can have a short attention span, but we know that they are willing to experience a brand’s content if that content is compelling.”
– Evelyn Wang, SVP Marketing Markwins Beauty Brands Global
Below are images from the experience.
Gen Z and Millennials
The brand’s core consumers are Gen Z and Millennials, and as a result, we need to understand how these audiences behave/what they want. For this consumer, it is all about building meaningful connections. Their attention span is a lot shorter, so we have to engage with them in a way that will make them want to take the time to explore a relationship with the Wet n Wild brand.
The experience launched at Beautycon in Los Angeles, where Gen Z and Millennials loved the experience.
The experience created a closer connection with their consumer and an opportunity for a more powerful brand recall. It was more than a promotional tool. It is an extension of the brand where the millennial consumer is propelled at the center of their world, fully engaged with it and the products.
“Our goal was to create something visually arresting that would break through and resonate, gaining the heart and imagination of our consumer. With VR we’re able to create a closer connection with our consumer while creating an opportunity for more powerful brand recall.”
– Evelyn Wang, SVP Marketing Markwins Beauty Brands Global
The experience has now been released as a mobile App and across Wet n’ Wild’s social media platforms that play 360 videos.
Behind the Scenes – Making the VR Experience
The production began with the outline of a script and storyboards telling the mermaid story. We had to consider the entire 360º area and design the experience so that viewers could see the story from different angles and that the various elements of the story connected.
The team then worked on creating the characters in the story – the queen, the guards, and the mermaids.
Finally, we began the casting call for the characters in the story. Each model needed to represent the brand and have a strong screen presence to sell the idea that they were the mermaids.
Scanning in the On-Camera Talent
The models were scanned from every angle to capture their entire bodies. We used photogrammetry to combine image data from every angle into a super-high-resolution digital double.
The mobile rig contains about 130 DSLR cameras, all precisely calibrated to capture each critical area of geometry we need. Using a full surround camera array allows us to capture all the geometry and texture information we need instantly, so the talent does not have to hold perfectly still for seconds or minutes, like with other scanning methods. Each instantaneous capture yields around three gigapixels of surround data. In a few minutes, we captured between 500 and 1000 images for each mermaid in this project. From there, the images were all combined to create a high-quality 3D model.
Shooting the Commercial
It was a challenging production to create a magical 360° underwater world full of 3D CGI animated sea creatures combined with live-action footage of real people.
The live-action component was shot on a large green screen stage. Each actor was carefully rigged and suspended to create the effect of the talent swimming underwater or being suspended in water. Groove Jones ECD & Director Dale Carman took his time helping each actor become comfortable suspended in the rigging, gauging their ability to direct their performance accordingly. The rigging aspect was a challenge. We had to carefully strike a balance between enough rigging and support to effectively suspend each actor without their bodies being completely covered with various harnesses. Since the final piece was to be a 360° VR experience, we had to capture each shot since, for each performance carefully, you would see the actor’s entire body in 360°.
The models were hung from the ceiling to create the effect of swimming underwater. Plates were shot with an Arri Alexa stereo rig. Talents were moved to replace the actors’ legs with animated tails, creating a complete computer-generated underwater world.
Each actor was shot separately so we could composite them into a shot with VFX.
Compositing was a complex challenge since the scene combines 3D and 2D elements within a 360° CGI environment.
We used traditional makeup on the actors as well.
Including the actual client’s product.
You are immersed in an ocean; sea life and mermaids are intertwined. Unlike traditional 2D compositing, where elements are just in front of or behind one another for viewing on a 2D bordered, flat screen, our final view is stereoscopic and in 360°. A complex compositing pipeline using the actual 3D position of each pixel and combining the various 2D and 3D elements perfectly was developed by Groove Jones.
Once completed, our underwater world was filled with an abundance of 3D CGI sea creatures moving all around you, the viewer, and the merpeople. The 3D CGI sea creatures were modeled, textured, rigged, and animated in Maya. Everything was then integrated and composited in our Nuke VR pipeline to create the final stereoscopic 360º experience.
For more information and to shop the Midnight Mermaid collection, visit wetnwildbeauty.com. Wet ‘n Wild® is a cruelty-free beauty brand delivering on-trend beauty at affordable prices.
