It’s one thing to stumble into your kitchen in the middle of the night and spy a mouse scurrying behind the fridge or a cockroach running for cover. It’s quite another thing to stumble into your kitchen in the middle of the night and come upon a group of tiny men playing soccer. That’s the unexpected situation a woman confronts in an inventive new spot for Yahoo!, created by Black Rocket Euro RSCG, San Francisco, and directed by Marcos Siega of bicoastal/international hungry man—with visual effects and postproduction by Phoenix Editorial, San Francisco.
Titled "Critters," the :30 promotes Yahoo!’s official partnership with soccer’s 2002 FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan, illustrating how fans can visit FIFAworldcup.com to find stats and scores any time of the day or night. The ad is currently airing in England and will also break soon in Europe, South America and Asia, as well as in the United States. For those of you who are not soccer aficionados: The FIFA 2002 World Cup tournament will be played in Korea and Japan, May 31-June 30.
Set sometime during the night, "Critters" opens on a woman soundly asleep in bed. She is awakened by men’s voices.
Cut to the dimly lit kitchen, where we spot two teams of little men in red and blue uniforms, playing soccer. They’re tiny guys—about nine inches tall.
One of the players kicks the ball toward a homemade goal—a baking pan set on its side. The goalie deflects the ball, which flies upward, hitting a bottle of milk sitting on the countertop. The bottle tips over, spilling its contents onto the floor.
As a grateful cat laps up the milk, a player sneaks up, grabs the ball, and the game resumes. When the red team scores, they whoop for joy.
At that moment, the woman—who has come to investigate—turns on the kitchen light, spies the miniature soccer players and screams. Startled, the athletes run, climbing up a computer cord dangling off a desk, darting across a computer keyboard and diving into a computer screen, which is open to the aforementioned World Cup soccer page.
The words "Always on" are superimposed on the screen, which then goes to a black card. That card reads FIFAworldcup. com. There is also a Yahoo! logo. In the background, we hear the familiar voice yodeling, "Yahoo!"
What’s compelling about "Critters" is how realistic the action looks. "We wanted it to be believable, not fantastical," commented Black Rocket art director Cory Smith, who noted that he took inspiration from the 1995 film The Indian in the Cupboard. (Directed by Frank Oz, the movie depicts a young boy’s relationship with toys—including an Indian figure—that magically come to life.)
Once Black Rocket had the concept worked out, the agency hired Siega to direct the spot. As it just so happens, Siega is a die-hard soccer buff. "I’ve played soccer my entire life," he shared. "I went to college [St. John’s University, Jamaica, New York] on a full soccer scholarship, and I was on the Olympic development team." As if that weren’t enough, Siega’s father, Jorge Siega, was once a professional soccer player for the New York Cosmos.
"It was like this guy was the perfect fit," Black Rocket copywriter Joe Rose said of the younger Siega.
Upon hiring the director, the creative team—supervised by Black Rocket creative directors Bob Kerstetter and Steve Stone—sent him a brief outlining what they wanted to see happen in the spot. With those directions in hand, Siega created detailed storyboards. "When we saw the storyboards and how he actually wanted to shoot it, that really brought it to life for us," recalled Smith. "He had all these ideas on how to make the action seem real."
Siega went so far as to choreograph specific plays for the soccer players to complete. "He brought so much to the table in terms of the soccer action," Rose stressed.
The helmer isn’t necessarily known for effects work. "I don’t do a lot of big effects jobs," he acknowledged. "But it was so easy to work with the effects guys," he noted, referring to the team at Phoenix Editorial. "Any time I had a real concern, they would walk me through why I shouldn’t be worried."
Early on, it was decided that relying on the tried-but-true green-screen technique would be best. "Then, we worked out a scale. How big are these men? We had to be really careful because that scale would affect our lens selection, how we shot our background plates, where we’d put the camera," explained Siega. "We figured it was a nine-to-one scale, so a six-foot person would be nine inches tall."
With that determined, Siega, DP Ross Richardson and members of the Phoenix Editorial team, including visual effects supervisor Matt Silverman, spent the first day of a two-day shoot at a home in the Los Angeles area, where they shot the scenes of the woman in bed, walking down the hallway and entering the kitchen. Obviously, there weren’t any little men for her to react to: Siega made do with Ken dolls, which he strategically placed on the kitchen floor. Incidentally, Ken dolls are more than nine inches tall, "So we cut their legs so they were the exact size we wanted them to be," Siega reported.
The next day, director and crew went to Raleigh Studios, Manhattan Beach, Calif., where they shot real men—all of them athletes, although none professional soccer players—playing soccer on a scaled-up floor in front of a green screen. "We had them playing on eight-foot-by-eight-foot plywood planks that were painted to match the linoleum floor in the kitchen," recounted Silverman. "We didn’t want their feet to look like they were floating around. That’s why we made this giant floor."
The athletes were also required to climb a replicated, 30-foot computer cord that was hung in front of a green screen. And to achieve the effect of the players running over the keyboard and diving into the computer screen, the production team built a green ramp that was at the same angle as the keyboard. The players ran up that ramp, then dove onto a green platform that was placed at a height proportionate to the actual monitor in relation to the keyboard.
Once the shoot was completed, the crew at Phoenix Editorial composited the imagery, and Phoenix’s Bob Frisk edited the spot. Because of all the pre-planning, the process went smoothly, according to Silverman.
And while "Critters" is effects intensive, "It’s not really an effects spot; it’s a storytelling spot," Silverman maintained. "The effects simply help tell the story."
