Consider it Burns and Allen with a bovine twist. A couple of CG cow characters, Anchor Cow and his younger sidekick Moo, are the straight man and the ditzy punch-line deliverer, respectively, in this :30 titled “Look Out” for Anchor Spreadable, a buttery like dairy spread, via London agency Clemmow Hornby Inge.
The two CG cows interact in a live-action setting. The spot opens with Anchor Cow standing under the shade of a tree. A twig falls on his head, causing him to look up where he surprisingly finds his buddy Moo sitting on a tree branch, looking intently into the distance.
“What are you doing up there?” Anchor asks Moo.
“I’m looking for additives,” says Moo, an offbeat explanation ripe for a George Burns-like response (“Looking for additives, Gracie?”).
Indeed Anchor incredulously replies, “Looking for additives?”
“Yes, you get them in buttery flavored spreads, but not in Anchor Spreadable,” relates Moo.
“Do you actually know what additives look like?” queries Anchor.
“No, but there’s a strange thing over there that looks like a cloud with legs,” notes Moo.
“That’s a sheep,” says Anchor.
The spot then ends on a product shot of an Anchor Spreadable package. A voiceover then asks, “What’s in your tub?”
The core creative team at Clemmow Hornby Inge consisted of art director Micky Tudor, copywriter Brian Turner and producer Enca Kaul.
Peter Coffin directed “Look Out” via Passion Paris, an office recently opened by Passion Pictures, London. Coffin helmed the live action while also directing and animating the characters. The live-action DP was Jean Poisson. The live-action line producer was Alexandre Meliava. Emilie Walmsley and Nicolas Trout were producers in the U.K. and France, respectively. Hugo Sands was the executive producer for Passion Pictures.
“It was important to me that the live action was shot using the style of a hand-held camera, like a documentary,” said Coffin. “I find that CG characters which are composited into hand-held live action initially look quite surprising to the viewer and enable us to believe in them as real characters more easily than if the camera is locked off.” The spot deployed a Sony 750 HD camera. The CG models were built and animated in Maya. The animation was rendered and composited using proprietary tools at Paris studio MacGuff Ligne.
Passion Paris maintains a partnership with MacGuff Ligne, which enables Passion to access MacGuff’s animation and effects artisans, tools and resources. Working via MacGuff was a contingent of artists that included: CG modeling artists Virgine Taravel and Mathieu Trintzius; CG animation artists Kyle Balda, Frantz Vidal and Mirco Tomadini; renderers Fabien Pollack, Selim Draia and Mathieu Gross; and compositors Sebastien Rey and Celine Allegre. Visual effect supervisor was Etienne Pecheux. Postproduction coordination at MacGuff was handled by Laleh Sahrai, Christelle Balcon and Catherine Bernet.
Voiceover artists were comedians Stephen Fry and Tony Robinson.
