Dell’s campaign celebrated the XPS 13 as a portal to creativity—so our team at MPC built a literal universe around it. With everyone owning one shot, my responsibility was creating a dizzying camera reveal that travels backwards from one plate through a TV screen, into a dark mirrored room (fully CG), then continuing backward into a white void packed with a large crowd of viewers, each “reacting” with animated emoji thought bubbles.

To piece this all together involved animating a camera and stitching it together with and match-moved camera, then populating the space with a large number actors that were each filmed on a green-screen with a motion controlled camera. Each one of these keyed plates was then used as a card instance in a Nuke particle system that was used to populate the environment. Finally, CG emoji’s were added over the viewers to show their reactions to the large video screen. The result felt like the Matrix meets Instagram—a perfect metaphor for how tech can creativity.