Director/DP Joe Pytka and New York-based visual effects shop Quiet Man enable a baby elephant to joyfully kick up its heels in a new General Electric (GE) spot titled “Singin’ in the Rain” (:45), which takes its inspiration from the classic 1952 film of the same name. Created by BBDO New York, the uplifting spot–which functions as a teaser for GE’s new corporate image campaign–promotes the fact that GE’s employees are using their “ecomagination” to do business in an environmentally friendly way. This, in turn, makes nature happy, according to Tom Darbyshire, BBDO senior vice president/senior creative director/copywriter.
While the merrily dancing elephant is simply enchanting to watch, Darbyshire revealed that the decision to feature a dancing elephant–as opposed to say a dancing monkey or a dancing flamingo–wasn’t finalized until just two days before the spot was shot at Universal Studios Stages, Universal City, Calif. last winter.
“We considered pretty much every animal you can find in nature,” Darbyshire shared.
“I have to give it to Pytka,” Darbyshire’s partner Ted Shaine, BBDO senior VP/senior creative director/art director, related. “He said he thought the elephant would be the most charming, and he was absolutely right.”
Of course, training an actual elephant to dance was, well, not an option. So BBDO and Pytka, who directs out of PYTKA, Venice, Calif., called on the creative genius of Quiet Man animation director/visual effects supervisor Johnnie Semerad to figure out exactly how to create the illusion. Ultimately, it was decided that two dancers–each wearing a pair of rubber elephant legs and spaced the appropriate distance apart–would perform the actual dance moves, which choreographer Vince Patterson adapted from the late Gene Kelly’s legendary performance in Singin’ in the Rain. The dancers’ legs were later married in post with the body of a real African elephant–footage of which was shot on location in South Africa.
“Using an elephant actually made our lives dramatically easier because a baby elephant’s scale in terms of the length of its legs is not too far off from that of a human’s,” Darbyshire explained. “If we had decided to do this with say a long-legged bird or a Meerkat or a gopher or something, we would have had to shoot plates, and then put in an imaginary creature, and it would have been really hard.”
Not only that–it likely wouldn’t have been as believable, Semerad remarked. “That was a big part of the believability of the spot, that we shot [the dancers] on the set doing all of the stuff,” according to Semerad. “They were actually stepping in the water, and the water was splashing all over the place, and as they were jumping on the log, it was moving, and as they danced, they were bending blades of grass.”
Quiet Man executive producer Amy Taylor added, “That’s what really takes it home.”
WILD KINGDOM
In addition to shooting the dancers, Pytka also had to shoot wild animals on set, including a monkey, a snake and a pair of flamingoes.
“That’s not stock footage,” Darbyshire stressed. “All of those animals were brought to the set and shot.”
Why not use stock footage? “You just have more control when you shoot something than you do going out and buying something that may not look like it was in context,” Shaine reasoned, adding, “Pytka was able to light them–he really prides himself on his lighting–and run a long take and pick the best performance. I use that word loosely,” Shaine said laughing.
Actually, Pytka did get remarkable performances out of his animal actors. While Quiet Man’s artisans added rain throughout the spot (the animals, the monkeys in particular, don’t like to get wet, so on the set water was sprayed behind and in front of them but not directly on them), they did not alter the animal’s expressions.
Perhaps the animals performed so well because they felt at home. Pytka and his crew built an astonishingly realistic rainforest set on which to shoot “Singin’ in the Rain.” “There is a surprising complexity to building a working rainforest because you have to be able to capture that rain and recycle it so that you don’t flood your set. Meanwhile, you’re running all this high voltage electricity and lights everywhere with rain coming down,” Darbyshire said. “There were a lot of safety issues.”
Thankfully, everyone–animals and people–survived the wild and wet shoot. Sherri Margulies and Matt Shapiro of Crew Cuts, New York, then co-edited the spot, and David Horowitz of David Horowitz Music Associates (DHMA), New York, composed a gorgeously rich orchestral version of “Singin’ in the Rain” to accompany the visuals.
“We wanted to stay true to the lush sound of the original,” Shaine said.
Darbyshire pointed out, “The sound was processed to make the music sound like it was coming off of old film mag rather than being digital recorded sound, which it was.”
Looking closely at the key players in the making of the “Singin’ in the Rain,” one can’t help but notice that the team was made up of a number of spot industry veterans. Shaine noted that he has worked with Pytka, Semerad and Horowitz for years. “I go back so many years in the business, I think I gave Pytka one of his first jobs–and he still talks to me,” Shaine quipped.
Getting serious about Pytka, Shaine said, “Pytka brings a visual style to these [type of spots] that makes them–I’ll use the word painterly. He has a great eye, a great sense of timing, and he works with the best people.”