Asgrow Delivers

Blind and St. Louis agency Osborn-Barr teamed up to promote Asgrow, a brand of soybean seed, developed to help growers maximize yield, productivity and profitability. With the concept entitled ‘Midas Touch,’ the viewer goes inside the lab where Asgrow researchers have developed the seed. We see the scientists working and witness as plants magically begin to grow. We move from the lab to the farm and meet a farmer. He’s got the touch too! As he surveys his fields in the afternoon light, soybean plants grow behind him. After following our farmer into a vast field, verdant and thriving with healthy soybean plants, the spot resolves by revealing a featured plant holding the legendary five bean pod as the farmer looks on proudly.

Our mandate for this project was realism. A funny request since we would be presenting something lifted out of science fiction, but we thought “cool!” Since this ad would be directed to soybean growers, we’d been told it was imperative the plants we would be creating had to be photo real. With a bit of research, help from the client and the scientists at the lab and some careful modeling and texturing, our team made it happen.

We should also mention aside from the mandate for photo realism on the computer generated plants, we had to do our shoot at the Asgrow facility, we had to use real researchers, a real Asgrow farmer and shoot on an Asgrow farm. So off to St. Louis we went for prep and a two day shoot, one day on a farm near Hannibal Missouri and a second day closer to civilization at the lab in Chesterfield.

Shot on a RED camera system, and the footage integrated seamlessly into our Final Cut system back at the Santa Monica studio. Working closely with the agency and director, our editor pulled together a cut and the shots were assigned to the animation team tasked with making the unreal real.

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