A simple metaphor is at the heart of "Black Bird," a new ad for Motorola wireless services. Created by McCann-Erickson, New York, and helmed by director Peter Smillie of Venice, Calif.-based Smillie Films, the ad illustrates the client’s wireless Web services by depicting birds landing on invisible telephone wires. Digital effects and compositing were achieved at Sight Effects, Venice, where company partner Alan Barnett served as visual effects supervisor.
The ad, shot in black-and-white at a 1.85 to 1 aspect ratio, opens on a vast landscape with stormy skies. Suddenly a telephone pole wire snaps as if pulled out of position by an invisible force. A young girl in front of a farmhouse looks skyward as the shot shifts to a flock of black birds flying through the sky. Lightning streaks the sky, and the camera shifts, following the flock from different angles. Eventually, one bird in the foreground draws itself up and perches upon where the wire used to be. The bird is literally sitting in mid-air, its claws appearing as if they are wrapped around an invisible wire. Other birds follow suit. The supered tag: "Web W/O Wires."
According to McCann creative director/copywriter David Fowler, the mandate was to demonstrate a wireless world. The agency team came up with several scenarios in addition to the one showcased in "Black Bird," such as trapeze artists and window washers. But ultimately, Fowler said, they felt the bird-on-a-wire story line was "the strongest expression."
"It was a simple, clear idea, which come few and far between these days," said Smillie. "It’s a classic image, so it’s a good way to show what [the client wanted] to say."
Smillie shot and directed the background footage over three days in Great Falls, Mont. He opted to use the cinematic ratio for practical rather than artistic reasons, as birds traveling in a long and wide formation "fit better" on the 1.85 to 1 screen.
As for the black-and-white film, Smillie’s intention was to "enhance" the classic nature of the story. It turned out to be a fortuitous decision, according to Fowler, since the meadows of Montana turn brown in autumn. The weather is also unpredictable. "We were shooting approaching storms, so we had about an hour a day to shoot, but that hour was spectacular," said Smillie. "We were very lucky to have these fronts coming and going." On the other hand, there was a lot of downtime. "Oftentimes those storms are full of snow," Fowler said. "So we spent many hours along the road in trailers and four-wheel drives with the heat turned up."
While Smillie and the production crew were in Montana, Barnett and his team began building a CGI bird. Barnett said there wasn’t enough time to animate a whole flock of birds, so the decision was made to film real, trained birds on greenscreen and augment that footage with a few CGI birds. The birds, called Pied Crows, were trained for two weeks. "We also put up a plexiglass dowel, and that gave us the ability to see what was happening behind the wire—where the rear claw landed relative to the front claw," said Barnett.
DP Darek Wolski shot the two days’ worth of greenscreen footage at Culver Studios in Culver City, Calif. While Smillie shoots much of his own film, there was a chance he would be delayed by weather in Montana, in which case he would need a stand-in. "I needed someone I could trust totally, so it was wise to have Darek," he said. "He’s technically excellent and a great cameraman."
Likewise, Fowler said Wolski’s experience shooting birds ensured that filming ran smoothly. Moreover, the end result is a credible piece of film. "When the crows land, they even bounce when they hit the wire [like they would naturally]," said the creative director, who also praised Smillie’s "epic quality" film, Barnett’s "seamless" effects work, and agency producer Kathy Love’s managerial skills. "This is a classic producer spot, to Kathy Love’s credit," said Fowler. "You’re shooting [background] plates and then shooting birds with no backgrounds, and there’s an extraordinary leap of faith the creatives take, and Kathy really managed that process."
In the finished ad, a majority of the birds are real, but CGI birds are prevalent in about five shots, and in one—shot from a low angle looking up at the birds overhead—they make up the majority, about 90 percent. In addition to creating the CGI birds and compositing the greenscreen footage, the Sight Effects team added lightning to the stormy scenery, rebuilt some bird claws with CGI, and removed existing telephone wires from the background footage.
