Three lovely ladies can currently be seen gracing television screens up and down the UK, singing the virtues of Tropicana juices. With a distinctly Latin American flavour, Rosita, Marguerita and Dolores, dressed in their colourful native costumes, introduce themselves to the nation with a catchy little musical number. The twist is that they are birds – parrots, to be precise – and these avian Carmen Mirandas were choreographed by the digital wizards at Framestore CFC.

Tropicana 'Parrot Dance' was created by DDB London's John Webster. The 40-second spot - the first of four planned for 2004 featuring the trilling trio - was directed by Mick Rudman for Park Village.

Rudman initially brought the project to Framestore CFC in August 2003. Framestore CFC's Visual Effects Supervisor for the project, Tim Osborne, came up with a method of achieving the desired look and feel, given that Webster wanted to use real birds as much as possible, aiming for a naturalistic 'docu-soap' feel. "We wanted to give them the flexibility to allow these parrots to do anything," recalls Osborne, "The producers could obtain trained birds that would do all the necessary moves, and we said we'd replace the beaks on the shots. As the scripts progressed, John (Webster) wanted to incorporate more elaborate dance moves – lifting the birds' feet up into the air and so on, so leg animation was added to the 3D shopping list."

The raw material for all four spots was shot over eight days at Black Island Studios in West London. Nine parrots were on hand for the shoot – a necessary precaution in case any of the starlets proved temperamental on the day, as well as reducing the need for retakes due to unsynchronised moves. The birds had been trained at Leavesden by Birds and Animals – the company responsible for Harry Potter's owls. After some debate over whether to use blue or green screen backgrounds, as the birds sported plumage in both colours, they were shot against green screen, which worked out just fine.

Osborne was on set throughout, working with Rudman to ensure that the Framestore CFC team got all the material they'd need for post production. To speed up the pipeline, footage for each shot was sent immediately to Kate Owen, at Marshall Street Editors. Using Osborne's notes and Rudman's direction, she performed rough comps in the Avid, cut and returned the material to the studio, giving almost instant feedback on the work in progress. The schedule was extremely tight – in part because of the huge amount of tracking and CG work involved.

Whilst the shoot was proceeding, the animators at Framestore CFC were starting work on the lip synch – or beak synch in this case - using a recording of the song. An early version of the animation tested by the Framestore CFC team featured birds with an opening top beak, given them a bit more 'character', in the traditional animated creature sense of the word. The client, however, felt this was wrong for the idiom, and the top beak was thereafter locked, as it is in real parrots.

"The first task," says Osborne, "Once we'd got an approved edit, was to get all the lighting information, camera data, angles and lenses etc. collated and sent up to the 3D team – a big paperwork job."

"Then I started building the jungle," he continues, "One of the reasons it's such a big job is the sheer volume of compositing involved. Each shot consists of about six layers, with a stock shot in the background, then a plate of foliage, then three separate parrots, and then more foliage in the foreground. We'd gone with the option of putting camera moves on in post, so we had to add a parallax effect to the greenery."

With client approval of grading and other issues sorted, the rough beak animations created by the 3D team started arriving. These were plotted on to grey-scale models, and these, along with two more fully realised shots were presented to the clients on 10th March. Jason Bartholomew, the spot's producer at Framestore CFC, was delighted by the response the presentation received. "They didn't want to change a thing," he says, "Both the look and the lip synch convinced them; after that, it was full steam ahead."

With the animation signed off, the final stages were the painstaking tasks of removing the real beaks from the birds, as well as texturing the CG material. Osborne is keen to honour the skills of the team's Senior Technical Director, Simon Stoney. "He did a fantastic job of matching the lighting. It made my job that much easier because he was effectively comping it upstairs, before I even got my hands on it."

Telecine for the spot was handled by Colourist Steffan Perry, who ensured that all the elements for Osborne's final comp were carefully matched.

With two further spots featuring the colourful chanteuses due on air by April, and a Christmas spot also in the can, for Tropicana and the Framestore CFC team the future is bright. The future, indeed, is orange…and blue…and green…and yellow…

Agency DDB London
Creative John Webster
TV Producer Lucinda Ker
Production Company Park Village
Director Mick Rudman
Producer Alex Katz
Editor Kate Owen at Marshall Street Editors

For Framestore CFC:
VFX Supervisors Tim Osborne, Dave Hulin
Henry Artists Tim Osborne, Alix Smith
Animators Dave Hulin, Howard Sly, Chris Syborn, Gwilym Morris, Don Mahmood, Kate Hood, Simon Stoney, Alex Doyle, Laura Dias
Trackers Dean Robinson, Giles Bartlett, Benjamin Loch, Joe Leveson
2d Travis Porter, Terance Alvaras
Telecine Colourist Steffan Perry
Post Producers Jason Bartholomew, Rebecca Barbour