If water is life, it stands to reason that bottled water is bottled life. "Surfaces," a new :30 for Gatorade’s bottled water brand Propel, makes this concept a reality with a huge "Bottle God" that dispenses athletic human specimens one droplet at a time.
Gatorade, a company with lots of experience in the hydration business, created an edge for itself in the bottled water industry by adding light flavoring and vitamins to its water product. But the job of differentiating Propel from Gatorade Thirst Quencher—Gatorade’s flagship drink—fell to the company’s advertising agency, Element 79 Partners, Chicago.
"The target is different," noted Canice Neary, creative director/copywriter at Element 79. "[Propel] skews a lot more female than Gatorade [Thirst Quencher], and it skews a little older as well. What works for Gatorade [Thirst Quencher], with its hard driving action footage, just isn’t right for this."
Nearly a year ago, Neary and his partner, executive art director Doug Behm, conceived and produced "Drip," a :30 Propel ad directed by Michel Gondry of bicoastal/international Partizan. In it, the camera is locked on a tiled surface where drops of water land repeatedly. Athletes spring forth from each drop, and run off screen in pursuit of their given sport.
The ad took a significantly different approach from any campaign for its Gatorade cousin. Rather than using star athletes, everyday athletes were employed. And rather than showing people drinking the product, a fantasy world was created where athletes emerge from drops of Propel.
"We didn’t want the traditional spot showing active people with the product in hand," said Behm. "This time we reversed it so the consumer is inside the product. By seeing active people and not focusing on who they are, it allows the viewers to put themselves in their shoes. Seeing someone drinking the product leaves more opportunity to take a long look at that person and say, ‘That’s not me.’ "
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This year, Behm and Neary set out to update the "Drip" concept. For "Surfaces," director Gerard de Thame of bicoastal HSI Productions, and Gerard de Thame Films, London, and DP Denis Crossan worked closely with special effects house The Mill, London, to add some new dynamics. (The Mill also has an office in New York.) "Surfaces" features different settings, athletes interacting and camera movement. Also, the viewer gets a much closer and cleaner look at the special effects.
The ad opens on a pristine, outdoor-type running track set against a black background. From above, a large drop of water lands in one of the lanes, accompanied by a wet plopping sound. Water droplets flower from the center of the drop, and a fit-looking runner rises to his feet. With hypnotic smoothness, he breaks into a run.
We cut to an orange volleyball court marked with white lines. Outside of the lines is more black nothingness. Another drop of water plops onto the court, and an athletic woman spins into an upright position. Without missing a stride, she moves forward and leaps to make a crushing spike.
Another water blob splashes onto a green tennis court. From a supine position, a tennis player with racket in hand emerges from the droplets to field a shot. A drop lands on a vaulting apparatus in the next scene, and the emerging gymnast performs a back-flip dismount.
Next, we are brought to a basketball court where drops come in succession to create a pickup game. Two offensive players leap from the splashes and begin making their way down court. A third drop creates a defensive player just in time. The ball is passed back and forth as the teammates make their way around the defender.
Finally, we are allowed a glimpse at this giver of life. The great god in the sky is a massive water bottle turned upside down. From its spout, a new drop collects, and as it grows, we can make out a woman wearing boxing gloves curled up inside. The droplet falls into the middle of a collection of hanging punching bags and the woman bursts from the splash with a karate kick. "Get water as active as you," a voiceover says.
We are brought back to the huge bottle where, through the clear plastic, we see numerous athletes floating inside. The camera pans down over the label as the bottle rotates into an upright position. The voiceover chimes in again: "Propel Fitness Water, with flavor to hydrate and vitamins to nourish."
At the end of the spot, a drop escapes from the spout and slides down the side of the bottle. A close-up shows a woman inside the drop. It reaches one of the bottle’s rippled edges and pops. The splash reveals the woman to be a rock climber, and she proceeds to scale the bottle’s side. "It’s how Gatorade does water. Propel," the voiceover concludes.
As one might guess, execution was vital in a spot like this. The special effects are in the spotlight for the entire ad and subject to tremendous scrutiny. "When the eye is distracted by so many things, you accept special effects more readily," stated Behm, "but if something is clean and focused right in front of you, it’d better be really good."
The Mill’s Dave Smith, who served as on-set effects supervisor/Flame artist/online editor on the job (and whose title at the company is visual effects supervisor/Flame artist), worked with de Thame on set, and together they employed a variety of postproduction and production tricks. "I always prefer to get as much in camera as possible and enhance it later," said Smith. "We worked very closely with Gerard to find the best way to achieve the look, and shoot the elements we needed to create the final spot."
"Surfaces" combines forward and reverse motion, underwater photography, motion control, laser lockdowns, morphing technology, Flame particles, models and computer graphics. "I thought one area I could improve was the way they emerged from the drops," said de Thame, "so we did some complicated moves with the athletes—somersaults, spinning and that sort of thing. When they emerge from the splash, which is in reverse, they have to hit a spot, go through that spot, and into their forward action."
To do this, de Thame and Smith needed to established a set point from which actors could jump backward onto a crash mat (to be reversed later) and move forward into motion. The two actions would be combined later in post as one movement, but there was one problem: Joining the two segments created a pause in the middle.
"To combat that, we had these rigs made that shined different lasers at different points on [the actors’] bodies so we could always get them back into exactly the right position every time," de Thame related. "Then we took their action back through that point and forward through it again. This way we had a point that was not just a fixed point, but it was moving through a number of frames. When we joined the reverse bit with the forward action, it enabled it to be a really smooth join. Where there were slight inconsistencies, we added mini-morphs to get the action just right."
All agreed that the greatest challenge was the basketball scene. "[The actors] had to pass the ball to someone who wasn’t there and it had to be caught from someone who wasn’t throwing it and they had to react to people who weren’t there and make sure they didn’t run through each other," noted de Thame. "But it was the only way to do it because the camera is moving and they were interacting with each other. Just the little thing of moving the camera makes it a much more complicated process." Neary added that the team spent more time with the basketball scene than they did with all of last year’s spot.
As Neary and Behm dreamt up concepts for "Surfaces," the notion of "impossible" never crossed their minds. "I don’t think the question was, ‘Can we pull this off?’ It was, "Who can pull this off the best?’ We were looking for the director with a track record of blowing your mind with visuals," said Neary. "Last year, it was Michel Gondry. This year, it is Gerard de Thame. Both of those guys, visual effects-wise, have mastered commercials. The challenge was how to bring the idea forward, make it stand alone and make it even more interesting to watch than it was before."
