Doritos Part 1: visual effects breakdown

After completing my Doritos contest entries for 2011, I found that many people were curious about how I did all the effects and edits for such an ambitious project.

Take a look at the entries here:
Have a few
Fantacy

In this tutorial series, I will explain the process in which I built the avalanche effect and composited it together. In a nutshell, I first took the shot into Blender and built around the mountain to pour the chips on. Then, I created the chip objects (about 5 separate objects for a random look) and made a particle system for the avalanche. This took a bit of tweaking to get it to ‘pour’ right and get the look I wanted. Then render the chips as an image sequence. After that, I brought them all into Shake and composited it all together. Then render that clip out and bring into the complete edit using Final Cut Pro. No sweat!

Here is a list of the tools I used:
Canon Rebel T2i (550D)
Azden shotgun mic
5 ft. home made mini jib
Blender 2.5 (for 3D avalanche, particles and physics)
Shake 4.1 (for compositing)
Final Cut Pro
Soundtrack Pro

So to get started, here is the part 1 video: Breakdown.

As of this minute, if you happen to see my site and the video is not here, please come back soon. I’m still recording the videos and I have not uploaded them yet.