Travelers Insurance Spot Visually Defines "Umbrella Coverage"

What better way to represent financial security than a graceful swarm of umbrellas passing overhead? VFX house a52 made this concept a reality with their work on the Travelers Insurance spot "Drifters." Using a combination of real and virtual umbrellas, they multiplied the distinctive Travelers red logo by a thousand.

a52's VFX supervisor Patrick Murphy explains, "The premise of the spot is that these umbrellas are floating through society, protecting people, their businesses and autos. They're a metaphor for security, not constricted by the behavior of real umbrellas."

Director Frank Budgen planned to capture all the umbrellas in-camera, just as they were meant to appear within each of the finished scenes. Toward that end, special mobile rigs capable of suspending a dozen or more umbrellas were built and used on each location over the five-day shoot, where Budgen filmed on Fuji F-64D and Reala 500D stocks using the ARRIFLEX 235 camera package.

Though the mix of actual and virtual umbrellas presented a challenge to the VFX team, ultimately it was better for the production, as producer Jenny Bright explains, "It was a request of the VFX team to shoot the real umbrellas to give us a standard for the movement and shadows of the virtual umbrellas. The challenge was to enhance the lyrical qualities while maintaining the desired realism."

Though the piece was shot entirely in locations throughout LA in Silver Lake, Venice Beach, Santa Monica, Lancaster, it has an unspecific, anywhere-in-the world feel, which helps convey the blanket security message.

a25 produced VFX primarily with Autodesk Flame and Maya—"About half of the shadows and reflections were practical, the rest were animated in Maya and composited in Flame," says Bright.