A Gold standard for branded entertainment
By Robert Goldrich
Consider this a tale of two awards competitions, the first being the 2007 Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Show which honored the Pete Circuitt-directed and animated Microsoft Zune “Monsters” spot in the Animation category.
Fast forward to last month and Circuitt had a major hand in another accolade, a One Show Entertainment Awards Gold Pencil for the primetime CBS TV animated Christmas special Yes, Virginia, which he directed for Macy’s and JWT New York.
The two award bookends underscore a career progression for Circuitt, a.k.a. Bitstate (which is also the name of his U.K. studio), who continues to be active in commercials yet has diversified successfully into longer form branded content. Yes, Virginia was created and produced by Macy’s and JWT in conjunction with The Ebeling Group (the production house headed by CEO/exec producer Mick Ebeling, which handles Circuitt worldwide) and MEC Entertainment, a division of Mediaedge:cia.
Based on a true story, the half-hour special, which debuted Dec. 11 on the CBS Television Network, tells the story of eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon, a girl growing up in late 1800s New York City who started to have doubts about Christmas–a holiday she loved–when a playground bully tells her and other kids that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
This leads Virginia and her friend Ollie to venture out on their own to seek the truth. On the streets of New York they encounter Scraggly Santa (voiced by Michael Buscemi), a threadbare St. Nick who is trying to raise money for the less fortunate. Virginia also turns to her parents (voiced by Neil Patrick Harris and Jennifer Love Hewitt) for guidance but to no avail. Unable to find a definitive answer, Virginia turns to the voice of authority, writing a letter to The New York Sun, a newspaper steeped in the motto, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so!” Virginia’s letter makes its way to The Sun’s curmudgeonly editor, Francis Church (voiced by Alfred Molina) who at first dismisses it, having more important things to do. But thanks to Virginia’s determination and some help from Scraggly Santa, editor Church comes around to write the response that became arguably the most famous newspaper editorial ever and part of Xmas lore: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!”
Yes, Virginia received critical acclaim, for many hearkening back to the yuletide tradition of the animation special which in the 1960s brought us such perennial favorites as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Frosty The Snowman. It would seem Yes, Virginia is on course to become another annual holiday TV event.
Suffice it to say that Yes, Virginia has also made an impression in the ad community, perhaps the first of many on this year’s awards show circuit but just as importantly on how others might be coming to view branded content.
First, there’s the importance of story and entertainment value, both realized via the artistry involved in making a period piece, replete with a full cast of well developed characters. That artistry deployed CG in a manner that gave the final project a hand-crafted, stop motion animation-like feel.
“I needed the film to look like it was crafted by the human hand,” explained Circuitt. “I was afraid that the connection between the audience and the time period would be compromised if the work looked like CG.”
Robin Feldman, executive producer at JWT N.Y., earlier told SHOOT that the fully animated 3D is at times “hard to distinguish from the look of stop motion…You don’t feel the computer when you watch it.”
Feldman cited the contributions of Circuitt who used “as many real textures as possible to retain that homey stop motion holiday feel. The research he put in to make this show an authentic period piece in 1897 was meticulous.”
The second major lesson reflected in Yes, Virginia, is the naturalness of Macy’s involvement. Macy’s has a rich Xmas tradition, not only with its annual Manhattan parade but also the department store’s role in the classic feature Miracle on 34th Street.
JWT and the client thus let the special speak for itself, without any heavy-handed mentions or appearances for the Macy’s brand. And when Macy’s was part of the action, it wasn’t in an obtrusive manner.
In one scene, for example, Virginia is at one of her lowest moments as she walks aimlessly through New York’s Herald Square. She then sees a Santa display in a Macy’s window, helping to advance the story. It doesn’t feel like a forced product placement.
“The branded part of branded content wasn’t in your face, which respects viewers’ intelligence and allows the entertainment itself to shine,” observed Circuitt. “You can’t overlook the importance of that, which likely played a part in winning the Gold Pencil.”
Long and short Circuitt Yes, Virginia and the Gold Pencil have already helped spawn other major branded content opportunities for Circuitt and The Ebeling Group, though neither was yet at liberty to publicly discuss this pending work at press time.
“My hope is that Yes, Virginia will have a hand in opening up more branded content opportunities for us and others,” shared Circuitt whose animation background spans formal and real-world education.
After attaining a Bachelor of Arts in New Zealand, Circuitt went on to a post grad animation degree at Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts. He eventually made his way to the U.K., partnering in London house Tommygun, which specialized in online content.
But his fascination with the web and related animated gimmickry waned, leading him to focus more on film, video and motion graphics with the launch of the Bitstate studio in 2004. He became active in varied forms, including music videos. One music clip, Plastic Operator’s “Folder” featuring animation of cutout characters, caught the eye of Mick Ebeling.
As a result Circuitt partnered his Bitstate moniker with The Ebeling Group, landing global representation and stepping up his ad industry involvement with such commercials as Zune’s “Monsters” via agency 72andSunny, an ambitious ad for Carlsberg in the U.K. which due to circumstances never aired, and a relatively recent Royal Bank of Canada commercial, “Shiny Happy Relay” for BBDO Toronto, which centered on the Winter Olympics torch relay.
“This short-form work has refined my craft, making me a better storyteller for having to deal with the challenge of telling a story in thirty or sixty seconds,” said Circuitt who also keeps artistically nimble with short films he does for himself, the latest being a zombies-themed piece which he is in the midst of and which deploys CG to create cel and clay animation looks.
“It’s just another project full of experiences,” he explained, “that will enable me to bring new textures and feels to the rest of my work in commercials and branded content.”
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More