A commercial for Cadbury Gems that is based how there is no age to have a favourite color and how eating Gems is all about staying ageless.

The most crucial part was achieving the organic motion of the gems falling. It had to look extremely real.

Even though we had to re-create most of the sculpture in post in almost every shot, a real-life model of the sculpture was built as a placeholder on set in Styrofoam. This for the director and actors to be able to interact with it, for the DOP to frame the shots, and for supporting the VFX crew when creating the digital version, in terms of how the lights hits the surface, the sculpture’s position, size and proportions, and design of the pattern. Also, because of the weather conditions on location, peaking just above 30 degrees Celsius, plastic buttons very similar to the real chocolate gems were added to the model, as the chocolate would melt in the heat. So half the model was decorated with plastic buttons, and the backside were kept clean, as this would not face the camera in any shot. For the close-up shots, a second part of the head was built in Styrofoam, and decorated with real chocolate gems.

In terms of the weight issue, a metal rig painted in green, was created for the sculpture to support the weight, and later being removed in post.

Furthermore, HDRI light references were captured on set to be able to re-create the lighting and reflections on the gems digitally, and 360 degree images were taken to re-create the model with correct size and proportions.

When the final offline of the film was handed over to the visual effects crew, the work lasted for an intense 2 weeks, and involved seven artists, consisting of one Modeller, two Effects TD’s, three Compositors, and the VFXsupervisor. To begin with, the sculpture was modelled in 3D, based on the 360 reference images captured on location. With the model in place, 3D models of the small gems were scattered across the whole model of the sculpture based on the colour pattern from the placeholder on location. To create the realistic disintegration of the gems, all the scattered gems were added weight values, and simulated through a software called Houdini, shot by shot based on the offline. The compositors then added the final rendered images of the 3D simulated sculpture, and removed the live action sculpture and the supporting green rig from the shots where needed. A digital pole were also added to the shots where the sculptures feet and the ceiling was visible.