In the 2018 holiday season, Cricket Wireless wanted to promote its biggest offer, four lines of unlimited data for $100/month, and further establish its animated brand heroes as a part of pop culture. To achieve this, we created “Four for the Holidays,” a short holiday film starring Cricket’s animated brand heroes. To launch the film in true Hollywood fashion and give people a chance to learn more about its stars, we created the world’s first live stream with animated characters combining live action with real-time motion-capture technology on Facebook and Twitter. As part of the campaign’s premiere, the press junket event was hosted and promoted by Mario Lopez, one of Hollywood’s most famous reporters, and live-streamed across Facebook and Twitter. The actors behind the characters were transformed on-screen in real time to embody their animated counterparts and answer our influencers’ queries and audience questions, and to participate in social games.

The Live Social Press Junket was held on November 9, 2018. It was live-streamed through Facebook and Twitter as part of the premiere of the campaign. After the event, the content was distributed via Facebook and Twitter. The event was promoted through paid and organic social posts coming from Cricket Wireless and Mario Lopez. It was targeted at a mobile-centric and image-conscious group of consumers whose affinity for celebrity entertainment and pop culture made them an audience ripe for our execution. We used real-time motion-capture technology, the technique where live actors wear suits with reflective markers for cameras to track and record their motions. These recorded motions are then applied to rigs of 3D character models, providing the animation for the 3D characters. Going this route allows time to clean up all the captured movements in conjunction with the 3D models. We used this same baseline approach, but doing it live adds many levels of complexity. With live performances, the movements are laid on top of the 3D models in real time, therefore requiring no cleanup or readjustment time. To do this, the 3D body and face models and their rigs are specifically created to translate all these movements dynamically and live, including one of the character’s fur. The use of specialized real-time software, like the Unreal Engine, Xsens MVN Animate, IKinema, and Faceware Live is paramount to pulling this off. The mixed reality element of using 3D actors with a live-action actor in this project was done by creating a virtual background set for the 3D characters that matched with the actual physical set that Mario Lopez was performing in front of. We then simply composited the two sets together within the Tricaster switcher to create one set with all three actors in one place.