THE MAKING OF

Making “Of Rainbows And Other Monuments” with Clemens Ascher

Clemens Ascher dreamt up “this surrealistic and graphic world featuring mysterious monuments, the legendary Ferrari Rainbow and its furious drivers” – a minimalistic and metaphysical series in three subtly muted primary colours.

The ultra-distinctive stylings of Bertone cars are epitomised by the angular Ferrari Rainbow. This astonishing wedge-shaped concept car from 1976 never went into production and the prototype remains concealed in Bertone’s private collection.

Photos by Rainer Schlegelmilch and story on this largely forgotten legend here:
https://www.classicdriver.com/en/article/cars/classic-concepts-1976-ferrari-rainbow

Through CGI we set out to bring it into a uniquely imagined world. Clemens began by sketching  a deceptively simple series of shapes, exploring balance, colour and volume.

In the Recom Farmhouse London studio, we took Clemens’ initial sketches and began to work with them in CGI, turning the blocked volumes into architectural elements and experimenting with the placement of the car.

Gathering references for the concrete and asphalt. We spent time observing how the materials age, plants, water, sand and other natural forces work on the angular forms of buildings.

.Collaboratively, we created the monuments, making the abstract shapes work intriguingly but believably together. And we incorporated some pre-shot elements from Clemens – for instance, skies and figures.

Working closely at every stage with the photographer, we created the perfect setting and mood for this mysterious supercar. See how the yellow image was built up in this video:

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View the rest of the series here

Photographer: Clemens Ascher
Stylist: Alice Whiting
Model: Jacopo Ugolini
Make-up Artist: Amy Conley
Hair Stylist: Brooke Neilson and Craig McAtear

CGI Artists: Kristian Turner, Anna Toporova / Recom Farmhouse
Retouching: Aljaz Bezyak, Pêpe Alram / Recom Farmhouse

On Location: Mercedes E-Class with Nadav Kander

The Mercedes E-Class with Nadav Kander for Antoni  – a fascinating project creating an extraordinary car campaign. Strong lines, clear colours and striking textures combine with abstract architecture, surreal volcanic landscapes and of course the sleek refined lines of the flagship convertible.

The concepts contained angular modern architectural elements, contrasting beautifully with rough organic texture of the volcanic rock. Initially the idea was to have a modular set built that could be moved around the platform. However, this had a number of logistical and timing difficulties and so our Berlin team offered to create the elements in CGI instead. We were able to work directly with the art director in the studio to experiment with the utmost flexibility. In this way, we could perfect the shape and angles to match the layouts perfectly before the shoot began, whilst adhering to Nadav Kander’s input of keeping everything as simple as possible.

Testing the layouts and trialling different options:

Scene overview in CGI

 

With the angles confirmed, the shoot began.

Fresh from his fascinating portrait of Donald Trump for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year cover, the Nadav Kander flew to Lanzarote to shoot backplates and HDR spheres.

Scouting for the perfect locations for HDR spheres in the volcanic island landscapes:

shooting an example HDR Sphere from Lanzarote

After Lanzarote, we took more backplates at this spectacular location on the Spanish coast. This was the view from the infinity pool – if you squint, you can just see Africa.

The crew assemble…

Only the topmost graduates of The Handsome Boy Modelling School can throw a towel off and jump in the pool with such verve and élan…

Perfect dive!

perfect dive

Our own modelling efforts are less professional.

Still, everyone looks better with a giant yellow head. You can just see the base of the cherrypicker beside the pool, to take the shot from a direct birds-eye view.

High up above in the cherrypicker

Up in the sky for the perfect angle

 

The Recom poolside cabana is fully equipped! Processing and checking everything will fit together perfectly.

As the car was top secret at the time,  it couldn’t be photographed on location, and was shot at a secret platform on a closed set with high security.  We lived for a few days in a gilded cage, not leaving the hotel with its three shooting platforms.

This was our work view for the week! We have to confess we much preferred the pool….

Super Secret Location

Once the car and backplates were safely captured, we began work on putting together the images. We set the car seamlessly in the volcanic landscapes, and refined the textures and shapes of the CGI architecture.

The results form a uniquely stylish car campaign – Check out the rest of this elegant series on our site.

Mercedes with Nadav Kander

Credits:

Client: Mercedes
Agency: Antoni
Photographer: Nadav Kander
Creative Director: Tillmann Gossner
Art Director: Patricia Scheder
Art Buyer: Valerie Opitz
Production: Seaquist
Representation: Olivia Gideon Thompson at We Folk
CGI Artists: Sebastian Schierwater / Recom Berlin
Post Artists: Jonathan Clarke, Jonas Disch, Stephanie O’Connor, Jonas Braukmann / Recom Berlin

Halloween: Behind the Scenes of Recom Fearhouse

Inspired by the 80s horror movies we love, and particularly by The Evil Dead, we decided it was time for us to star in our own Night of Terror. Of course we’ll need the right vintage of car, complete with wood-effect side panels.

Image one: The Axeman
Join us as we willingly enter our own world of fear in the Making-of video!

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Now we’ll drive together from our small-town American home to a cabin in the woods…what could possibly go wrong?

Image 2: The Cabin
We built our movie-inspired sets in CGI using Maya. We were striving for a cinematic feel to the scene, so the environment is all-important – it becomes a character in the story that we’re telling.

Recom Fearhouse - Cabin CGI 1

With the layout of the shot decided, we added textures, and began work on the lighting.

Recom Fearhouse - Cabin CGI 4

For lighting direction we found a lot of inspiration from the photographer Gregory Crewdson. The exquisite lighting of his elaborately staged photographs, many of them taken at night, create a mood that connects the viewer to the story he is trying to tell.

We lit and rendered the scene in Vray and rendered volumetric fog for the desired atmospheric effect.

Recom Fearhouse - Cabin CGI 6

With final adjustments in Photoshop, the scene is set.

Recom Fearhouse: Cabin in the woods

What will happen to us here? Will we stay together, sensibly turning our finely tuned monitors into security cameras, and using our Wacom styluses to defend ourselves? Or will we inevitably become separated in the forest? …Stay tuned….

Aaaand….Credits:

Recom Fearhouse Credits

Hublot with Sandro Baebler

Swiss luxury watch brand Hublot assigned Sandro Baebler to shoot a portrait of one of their ambassadors, Chinese superstar pianist Lang Lang.

Sandro’s portrait session had unforgettable musical accompaniment, which can also be seen on his Facebook page here.

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After his work with the musician in a studio the photographer asked us to add a specific Manhattan skyline view as a background.

Sandro suggested the perfect place – a rooftop bar with spectacular views. Our New York team organised the permit and set out to shoot the night time scene. As the location did not allow the use of tripods we had to shoot at a high ISO setting, but by stitching together many exposures we were able to make a handheld ultra high resolution panorama.

The initial stitched panorama:

Hublot Lang Lang source panorama

Our studio in London created the piano, room elements and flooring in CGI and merged them skilfully and seamlessly with the panorama and the portrait to create an atmospheric night-time cityscape.

See how the image was built up in the Making-Of video here:

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The final campaign image with added product photography, as used on billboards and in magazines worldwide.

Hublot Lang Lang advert

See the final result on our site here.

Credits:
Client: Hublot
Photographer: Sandro Baebler

CGI Artist: Adam Jones / Recom Farmhouse
Post Artist: Maria Luisa Calosso / Recom Farmhouse

Recom Farmhouse is on InstagramFacebook and Twitter!

More work at recomfarmhouse.com

Victimhood with Jonas Lord

It’s always one of our favourite experiences when someone turns up out of the blue with a really extraordinary project for us to work on – makes our mouse hands itch to start!  – and this series, inspired by Dutch and Flemish paintings, was a truly inspiring collaboration.

Jonas Lord explores the culture of victimhood in various metaphorical visuals with staged surreal scenarios. Post Artists Pepê Alram and Maria Calosso at our London studio helped Jonas with the series – this was a great combination, with the team working very smoothly together in a real synchrony of vision and ideas.

Jonas describes the series in his artist statement below:

“The series begins with an image of baby tigers – the symbol of the east – on a chopping board about to be consumed by rapid westernisation”

Photographer: Jonas Lord Post Artist: Pepe Alram, Maria Luisa Calosso

“It then speeds up with an image of a woman’s body devoured by wolves on a dinner table speaking about consumerist scrutiny of the female form in our culture.”

Photographer: Jonas Lord Post Artist: Pepe Alram, Maria Luisa Calosso

“In one of the photos, a tied up woman is calmly staring at the camera–she’s chosen to be in the position of an objectified woman. It’s not to victim blame but to comment on how society grooms certain people to consciously take part in their own victimisation.

We desperately snap Instagram pictures of ourselves from the best angles in hopes to be admired which ties us up to the desperate daily dose of admiration.

In this photo, the men are also reduced to faceless stereotypes who turn into animals as they step on the chess board.”

Photographer: Jonas Lord Post Artist: Pepe Alram, Maria Luisa Calosso

See how this image came together from the elements of its composition in this quick “Making of” video:

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“We desperately try to adhere to whatever beauty standards are on trend,  which I explored in the pic with two teenage girls awkwardly posing while shaving their body hair. I juxtaposed them with sheep in the foreground the inspiration for which came from a feminist protest in 1969 where protesters dressed up a sheep as Miss America.”

Photographer: Jonas Lord Post Artist: Pepe Alram, Maria Luisa Calosso

Do retouchers dream of electric sheep? How we did it…
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“Through these visual metaphors I was looking for ways to explore the manifold nature of victimhood. Do we choose to be victims? Are we groomed to be victims?”

Photographer: Jonas Lord Post Artist: Pepe Alram, Maria Luisa Calosso

We’re delighted that Jonas Lord approached us with his fascinating series and we’re stoked to work with this amazing new talent.

Credits:

Photographer: Jonas Lord
Post Artists: Pepê Alram, Maria Luisa Calosso, Kate Brown / Recom Farmhouse

Victimhood on recomfarmhouse.com

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