Virgin America's Ads Take Flight with DigitalFusion

DigitalFusion Helps Eleven Inc. and Photographer Robert Whitman Get Virgin America's New Ad Campaign Off The Ground

Virgin America is a revolutionary airline, and it now boasts a revolutionary new ad campaign to help attract new young passengers. The 5 million dollar media buy was headed up by Eleven Inc. Ad agency who hired team Halprin to produce and photographer Robert Whitman to photograph and execute the vision. "We knew going into the project that Robert Whitman brings a fresh approach to all of his photography, and we wanted to assist his technique by surrounding him with the latest digital photo gear." says Natalie Moy of DigitalFusion·PRO. "This meant the latest in cameras, computers, and monitors for accurate color rendition on set"

"Color was a key component in this campaign" describes Hugh Milstein at DigitalFusion. "We scouted an empty aircraft late one night at LAX and saw an amazing color light-show which was being controlled by a panel in the front of the aircraft. The flight attendants can actually control the mood of the lighting during the flight, and we wanted to capture the essence of that feeling for the ads."

Whitman and DigitalFusion tech Justin Ruhl spent several days capturing just the right mood using a combination of long exposures and digital plates for compositing. "The plates were very important because we knew that in order to get the deep reds and purple, we were going to have to drag the shutter, and that can blur subjects. We carefully balanced the onboard lighting with strobes to enhance the effect"

After the on board photography was completed, the entire job was loaded into DF Studio — DigitalFusion's proprietary Web-based editing software. The creatives at Eleven Inc. were each given a account in the system, and they edited the material quickly and efficiently, sharing their edits along the way. The resulting edits were easily organized and sent to Virgin America for final selection.

When the selects came back, DigitalFusion then focused on post production. "The large file sizes were necessary for billboards and bus wraps, so the intricate compositing had to be done at a very high level" explains Christina Olsen — DigitalFusion's Post Production Manager. "We had our post production artists working around the clock to finesse these images to just the right look, from color to final compositing, and along every step of the way — we were collaborating over the Internet with revisions. It's really great to see such a dynamic team effort seamlessly pull off this exciting new campaign — from capture, to editing, post production and file archiving — DigitalFusion did it all!"

For more of Robert Whitman's work, visit: www.robertwhitman.com