The lauded, longstanding animation campaign for United Airlines took a new direction–stop motion–with “Dragon,” a :60 that debuted in select markets during the Super Bowl telecast and just went national on the Winter Olympics. Helmed and shot by Jamie Caliri of Duck Studios, Los Angeles, for Fallon, Minneapolis, the spot centers on the close-knit relationship between a father and son–one that continues, in a different vein, even when dad is out of town.
The son’s imagination kicks in as he conjures up images of what his father is doing during a business trip. In a nutshell, dad is on a grand adventure, perched on a giant silver bird that transports him to a remote forest. His business suit transforms into a suit of armor and he goes back in time to become a knight, seated at a roundtable with fellow iron clad warriors.
A giant dragon attacks. The resourceful, sword-wielding knights break up the roundtable into sections that each serve as a shield against the fire-breathing creature. Ultimately the boy’s father slays the dragon and is crowned a hero.
We then return to present-day reality as the father returns home. We see him from an upside-down perspective–that of his son who is hanging off of a tire swing in the front yard. Appropriately enough, dad has brought back a gift for his kid: a toy dragon.
This imaginative odyssey plays to the musical accompaniment of a special arrangement of George Gershwin’s classic “Rhapsody in Blue.” The arrangement was done by Liz Myers and John Trivers of Trivers/Myers Music, Manhattan Beach, Calif.
Stop-motion animation was deployed to bring puppets to life on screen. This technique is accomplished by breaking up the figures’ motions into increments and filming a single frame at a time. “Dragon” was shot using a total of some 1,440 frames.
Caliri brought a diverse filmmaking background to the project. His credits, for example, include directing and designing the multi-layered title sequence for the feature Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Caliri has also directed live-action music videos for such artists as Marcy Playground and Morphine.
