Cartier, Miami Art Basel

Diamonds, Gold and Dreams.

In 2008 I produced a Dome film and series of design visualizations as directed by David Lynch for Cartier.  The film was projected inside Cartier’s Dome exhibit at Art Basel in Miami.   I created most of the CGI Animation for the film as well as the 3D Design Visualizations of the exhibit.  The whole process was completed in three months.

The Film.

The film is a seven minute piece called “Diamonds Gold and Dreams” created at a resolution of 4096×4096.  It is a combination of various abstract animations all blended together with a mesmerizing score.  Each shot is comprised of a large variety of hand animated CG diamonds which I modeled, textured, lit, rendered and composited together via various layers and post effects to achieve a realistic but dreamy look.

This was an early test I created to help better judge rendering times and compositing tricks which I used to pull off the final look for the diamonds featured in the film:

I’ve included a four sample frames from the film here.  Please keep in mind while viewing these that the film is designed to be screened on a half circle dome screen which encircles the viewer with a 180′ field of view.   Due to this the projection did not use the corners of each image, so the images shown below elude to the effect of being surrounded by diamonds.

 

Design Visualization.

The 3D design visualizations were created to showcase the interior of the Dome.  If your familiar with 3d, this was kind of like refined pre-viz as it showed off the design and various ways to present the space.   This space had to function as a large lounge and showroom as well as be used for exclusive dinning events.  We went through a few different design variations before arriving at the final seen here:

 

The Event.

I was lucky enough to attend Art Basel and I was on site for the final construction of the dome interior as well as several calibration tests of the film.    The various teams that put together the space and the hardware behind the film did an amazing job, it was pleasure to be a part of the process.   The entire experience was an immersive and magical world that showcased some of Cartier’s finest jewelery.   At the time I had recently picked up a new SLR and managed to snap a few shots throughout the event which you can see here:

 

 

 

David Lynch is an awesome director to work for and this was by far one of the most unique projects I’ve ever been involved in.  In this interview David talks a little bit about the creation of the film:

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article.asp?id=16565