Airtel Thematic Campaign TVC

Building the Airtel Red Universe

When Airtel and Indie Reels approached us, the brief was centered on the idea of connection—how a simple notification or a shared song can feel like an entire world opening up. As a VFX studio in Bangladesh, we’re often asked to handle standard clean-ups, but this was a chance to dive deep into stylized world-building.

The visual hook was the "Red Universe." We needed to move from a realistic Dhaka setting into a dreamscape where the sky is infinite and the brand’s logo acts as a central star. Whether it was a musician performing in a nebula or a digital "match" appearing in mid-air, the challenge was keeping everything feeling high-end and cinematic without losing the human touch.

From Concept to Galactic Scale

We divided the work into two halves: the "real world" and the "cosmic world." For the real-world scenes, we focused on sleek post-production in Dhaka, integrating AR-style UI elements that looked like they were actually floating in front of the actors.

For the cosmic sequences, our 3D animation team had to build environments that felt vast. We didn't want the "Red Sky" to look like a flat backdrop, so we spent a lot of time on lighting and atmosphere. The goal was to make the actors feel like they were actually standing in that space, bathed in red light, rather than just standing in front of a green wall in a studio.

Technical Execution

Here is how we actually put the pieces together in our pipeline:

• Precise 3D Tracking: We used PFTrack to map out the camera movement for every shot. This was crucial for the scenes where digital UI or "mini-worlds" appeared, ensuring they stayed locked to the ground and didn't "drift" when the camera moved.

• **Modeling the Brand: ** We built the central 3D Airtel logo in Blender. Instead of it being a flat icon, we treated it like a celestial body with texture and glow, making it the light source for the surrounding asteroids and nebulae.

• Atmospheric Lighting in Unreal Engine: To get the stylized red sky for the musicians, we used Unreal Engine. This allowed us to iterate quickly on the clouds and lighting, making sure the environment felt "dreamlike" rather than just a dark space.

• Clean Green Screen Keying: A lot of the heavy lifting happened in After Effects. We performed detailed green screen keying for the talent, focusing on hair detail and edge lighting so they integrated naturally into the bright red environments.

• Natural Color Integration: When you put people in a red world, they can easily look "washed out." We carefully graded the skin tones to keep them looking natural while still reflecting the ambient red glow of the "Universe."

• UI and Planar Tracking: For the mobile app sequences, we used Mocha to track the phone screens and "pin" the AR graphics. We added small details like lens flickers and soft glows to make the digital overlays feel like a real part of the camera's lens.

We’re a team of about 20 artists at FireDrum, and projects like this are exactly why we started the studio back in 2015. It’s one thing to make a pretty image, but it’s much more rewarding to build a visual language that a whole country sees on their screens.