Pre-Production

Concept & Scripting

The RLL Grease Fire Education Video was built from the ground up as an instructional animation aimed at apartment residents—focusing on what to do, and what not to do, in a grease fire situation. The script was structured around binary decision logic: every scene showed a dangerous behavior followed by a safer, smarter alternative. That structure wasn’t just visual—it was strategic. The goal was to turn real-world safety decisions into clear visual outcomes: bad decisions escalated into fire; good ones shut the problem down.

Early drafts of the script leaned on heavier narration, but as pre-production moved forward, we trimmed the fat. The voiceover was tightened to let the animation carry more weight, making each beat of the message sharper and easier to follow. One key update, shaped directly with the RLL team, was the closing line of narration: “Use these tips to help keep you and your property safe.” It was a small change with a big purpose—tying personal accountability back to the brand’s bigger mission of asset protection and safety-first awareness. The final visual moment? The RLL logo rendered in a crisp, glossy 3D finish, staying clear of any whiteboard or flat-style visuals by request.

Rapid Prototyping (RP)

Pre-production quickly transitioned into Rapid Prototyping, all executed in Cinema 4D using simplified scene files. During RP, every 3D asset was presented as a greybox model with flat diffuse shaders and no lighting, using C4D’s real-time viewport to speed up iteration. This approach kept the team agile—letting us lock down camera positions and action timing without getting caught up in render decisions too early. In one early test, we used cartoon-style smoke for visual placeholder—later dropped in favor of realistic fire and smoke once the tone pivoted to photorealism.

Core environmental pieces—like the fire extinguisher, oil bottle, baking soda container, and kitchen cabinets—were brought into the prototype from pre-sourced assets. To simulate organic surface buildup without custom UVs, we used triplanar projection to map grease and grime across the stove, backsplash, and cabinet surfaces—clean, fast, and non-destructive.

One of the big technical lifts was prototyping the baking soda pour using C4D’s native particle system. It was controlled via Xpresso to shape the arc, speed, and gravity settings with precision. Once the motion was locked and approved, these particle systems would later be baked for final production. During RP, the steak asset was intentionally cartoonish to save on time—it got replaced with a detailed photoscanned model during full production.

Interface elements like warning text, alert triangles, and green checkmarks were roughed in during this phase using After Effects. These were timed against the rough animation to check for clarity and visual pacing. Placeholder cartoon fire and smoke were also dropped into scenes with AE stock footage to help test scene intensity before VFX finalization.

This phase also locked in one of the project’s key stylistic decisions: fixed, isometric camera logic. No pans. No cuts. No dolly moves. Just rock-solid framing across every scene. This created a stable visual foundation that let the viewer compare wrong and right choices side by side—without any spatial confusion. That clarity became one of the animation’s biggest assets.

Early Visual Styles Explored

We tested stylized looks early—low-poly geometry, flat materials, minimalist shaders. But it didn’t stick. While those options had a clean aesthetic, they lacked the urgency and seriousness that fire safety demands. So we pivoted. The final visual direction leaned hard into photorealism using PBR materials, and Redshift was brought in for physically accurate shading, lighting control, and surface realism.

We experimented with multiple finishes—gloss, satin, matte—across appliances and packaging. The goal was balance: make it feel lived-in without showing dirt or neglect. The studio’s internal benchmark was clean realism—something tactile and grounded but still educational in tone. The result was a clean, idealized kitchen with enough texture to feel real without getting messy.

Prototyping Animation Concepts

RP wasn’t just about blocking—it was also the testbed for motion systems. We built out basic movement concepts like flammable cloth pulls, frozen meat dropping into hot oil, and procedural simulations for the baking soda pour. The soda sim was one of the most critical—it had to arc naturally, avoid clipping the pan, and still visually communicate a dry powder dispersing into the air. The Xpresso-driven particle setup gave us fast iteration across emitter speed, gravity, and arc radius. Once dialed, it was prepped for conversion into Alembic caches during full production.

Camera logic stayed locked. No movement. We kept a fixed isometric framing throughout every scene. That gave us control over consistency and let us toggle asset states—like fire/no fire, towel/no towel—without spatial disruption. This setup wasn’t just production-friendly; it made the whole animation modular, giving us the ability to adjust or re-render individual beats later if needed.

Style Choices and Reasoning

The final style landed exactly where it needed to: high on realism, low on noise. PBR materials gave us the fidelity to make the fire scenarios feel serious. A bright, clean blue background kept contrast strong and focused attention on key elements. The isometric layout made every decision point feel like part of a system map. And the overlays turned each scene into a decision diagram—teaching through design.

Every piece of the visual strategy was designed to support clarity. The lighting was restrained. The textures were clean but tactile. The animation logic reinforced the idea of choice and consequence. By keeping the spatial layout fixed and the asset behavior binary, we made each scene its own branching path—visually clear, educationally sound, and brand-aligned.

This animation didn’t just tell viewers what to do—it showed them, clearly and consistently. Every decision, from render style to camera logic, was made to teach through motion, with zero fluff and zero ambiguity. It was built for impact—and optimized for clarity.

Full Production (FP)

Look Development

Once the prototype cleared review, production shifted into full look development—moving from flat, greybox scenes to fully textured, lit, and rendered shots. The stylized approach from RP was dropped entirely in favor of a photoreal PBR-driven aesthetic. This was a strategic move. The project needed to feel real—high-stakes, grounded, and clear. Every material was authored or fine-tuned using Redshift’s shader graph, built to simulate believable surface behavior and wear without drifting into visual noise. This stayed true to the studio’s core principle of “clean realism.”

Every key surface got detailed treatment. The stovetop was textured to feel used but maintained—subtle gloss variation from fingerprints, hairline scratches in the metal, and light oil streaks. The olive oil bottle was built around a translucent green glass shader, with tuned subsurface scattering and refraction settings to create believable optical depth. We designed a custom fictional nutrition label for added realism and applied it with precise UV mapping to hit the right balance of credibility and composition. The steak asset, originally placeholder in RP, was swapped out for a high-res, photoscanned model with natural marbling, striation, and specular response—perfect for grounding the “don’t drop frozen meat in oil” visual.

To simulate thawing, we built a layered material stack that transitioned the steak from frosty opacity to glistening raw meat. This shift was driven by procedural noise animation, mapped to create a natural melting effect and suggest rising internal temperature. It was subtle—but critical for visual continuity and logical flow.

Lighting was intentionally soft and neutral across the board. We used a blend of HDRI environments and Redshift area lights to keep illumination consistent. HDRI gave us natural bounce and ambient realism, while targeted area lights allowed us to highlight key assets without introducing harsh shadows or scene drift. This lighting logic was locked across all scenes to support instructional readability and keep overlays legible.

Design & Animation

With lookdev locked, we moved into full scene animation. Everything was built in Cinema 4D, using a master scene structure with modular variants. The kitchen environment stayed consistent—the same isometric setup across all sequences—with toggled object states to show different actions: towel on vs. towel off, water vs. baking soda. This approach kept the instructional layout clean and made post-production integration more efficient.

The baking soda simulation, previously prototyped with Xpresso, was finalized and baked into an Alembic cache for render consistency. It included hundreds of particles arcing into the flame with controlled emitter dynamics—velocity, turbulence, and lifetime all dialed to feel responsive and real. The fire extinguisher animations were carefully timed to the voiceover, with nozzle angle, grip timing, and trigger behavior matching the narration beats.

The camera stayed locked to a fixed isometric view—a deliberate constraint that made each action easy to follow. The goal was to keep comparisons clean. By not changing the angle, the viewer could instantly see what was different in each version of a scenario. That framing was critical to how the animation worked.

UI overlays—triangle alerts, green checks, and instructional text—were exported from C4D using data passes to lock their positioning in post. A few moments included 3D-animated overlays that tracked directly with object behavior—like a checkmark appearing precisely when baking soda hit the fire. That extra motion helped drive home key moments without clutter.

Style Choices and Reasoning

The visual style wasn’t about flair—it was about function. Photorealism over stylization was a deliberate choice to give weight to the subject matter. Fire hazards need to feel real, not abstract. The PBR materials, controlled lighting, and physically anchored motion gave the whole piece a grounded credibility that a flat or cartoon style wouldn’t have delivered.

The fixed isometric perspective made each scene feel like a side-by-side case study—every action followed by its safer counterpart. This mirrored the script’s binary logic and allowed for quick comprehension without extra explanation. Combined with minimal backgrounds and visual overlays, it created a visual system where every element pointed to clarity.

The full animation was built in Cinema 4D and rendered using Redshift. Lighting combined HDRI domes for global ambient realism with area lights for controlled highlights and clean specular feedback.

Collaboration & Revisions

Revisions were managed across internal and client-facing cycles. From the client, feedback centered on flame intensity and text clarity. We pushed the visual impact in “don’t” moments, increasing fire spread for higher risk visibility. Overlay text was refined for readability—heavier font weights, better background separation, and more deliberate entrance/exit timing. These changes were all incorporated before final compositing, staying aligned with the project's central goal: clarity, consistency, and instructional impact.

Post-Production & Delivery

Final Compositing & Color Grading

Post-production was handled primarily in After Effects, with final sound and SFX polish completed in Premiere Pro. Since we had already pivoted away from stylized effects during pre-production, the compositing strategy leaned into grounded realism. Fire and smoke weren’t simulated in 3D, but their integration was highly tactical—requiring tight layering, motion tracking, and careful interaction with the 3D renders.

In the opening scene—originally placeholder cartoon smoke during RP—we rebuilt the moment using real smoke footage, composited with additive blending, opacity masking, and feathered edges to simulate realistic dissipation. Real fire footage was also used throughout, manually aligned frame-by-frame to interact with the kitchen geometry—curling behind cabinets and rising from pans convincingly.

Color grading and correction played a key role in maintaining consistency and clarity. Every render was balanced against the project’s clean blue backdrop to keep the tone educational and accessible. Fire exposure was controlled with curves—enough heat to register danger without washing out nearby objects. Color tweaks were used sparingly—glass stayed vibrant without becoming neon, and red overlays popped without oversaturating.

To boost the realism of the baking soda dispersal, we layered animated opacity masks, glows, and motion blur on top of the Alembic sim. The extinguisher spray was also enhanced in post using real spray footage, composited and tracked to the nozzle path with directional blur and pressure-based timing.

Where fire needed to appear behind physical elements—like curling around the stove or peeking out from cabinets—we manually animated masks to blend real fire footage into Redshift renders. In a few high-impact scenes, chromatic aberration was applied subtly to give lens realism, especially in the flame burst that follows the water pour sequence.

Infographics, UI Overlays, Data Visualization

The instructional clarity of this video hinged on strong UI overlays. All callouts were built with clean sans-serif type, bold iconography, and a deliberate color system—red for warnings, green for correct actions. These overlays started as AE mockups during RP but were re-animated in final post using C4D data passes to nail pixel-accurate positioning.

Overlay icons and instructional text were reinforced with secondary animations—motion trails, glow pulses, and subtle sparkles that aligned to key moments of interaction. Each enhancement was timed tightly to reinforce a teaching moment: the checkmark appeared as baking soda hit the flame, the alert triangle pulsed right as water splashed into the grease.

For scenes with dense interactions, like the baking soda pour, overlay timing was carefully staged to avoid visual crowding. Instructional text was pinned to voiceover beats—each phrase hitting right as the moment unfolded visually, keeping the viewer locked in on cause and effect.

Brand Consistency

Visually and tonally, the final composite aligned tightly with RLL’s brand: informative, calm, and credible. Overlay elements followed strict internal guidelines—color, spacing, font size, and icon scale were all calibrated for screen balance and clarity.

One of the final polish requests from the client was to elevate the RLL logo animation. We swapped the flat look for a polished 3D render, added a soft camera push, and layered in light reflections across the glossy mark. The final frame felt elevated and intentional—reinforcing RLL’s positioning as a trusted authority in risk mitigation and resident safety.

Delivery

The final deliverable was a 1080p H.264-encoded video, optimized for internal distribution and digital training. No alternate resolutions or cutdowns were requested. All overlays were rendered directly into the final composite—no separate graphic layers or UI exports were required. The export was clean, lightweight, and presentation-ready across standard training and education platforms.

Transcript:

Grease fires are the #1 cause of fires in residences. Unsurprisingly, fire can cause significant personal property damage for you and the units around you, and at RLL, we know that they are the #1 most expensive peril. 

So, how do you prevent grease fires?

#1 Never leave an active stove or cooktop unattended. 

#2 Never add frozen food to hot grease. In fact, you want to remove as much moisture as possible from your food before cooking it in oil.

#3 Know your oil’s heat rating before you begin cooking, as some oils can withstand higher temps than others before igniting. 

#4 Keep flammable items like linens away from the stove, and keep fire retardants like salt, baking soda or a fire extinguisher handy.

#5 Once the stove is cool, clean any grease that has splattered during cooking from the kitchen area including the cooktop, backsplash and counters. 

If a grease fire occurs, DO NOT attempt to put it out with water. 

Covering a pan with its lid will deprive the fire of oxygen and put it out. Pouring baking soda on it can also put it out, and of course a fire extinguisher works as well, if you have one.  

But adding almost anything else such as water, baking powder, or flour will make a grease fire much worse. 

Use these tips to help keep you and your property safe.