Combine a fetching cast of cats with a fantastically over-the-top premise, slick compositing work and a delightfully dramatic voiceover by Tim Curry, and you’ve got “Cats With Thumbs,” an entertaining, charming and most memorable new commercial for Arla Foods’ Cravendale milk.
Created by Wieden + Kennedy London, the spot was directed by Ulf Johansson of London’s Smith and Jones Films. London’s Moving Picture Company (MPC) handled the visual effects.
“Cats With Thumbs” opens on a man pouring milk into a bowl of cereal as his cat watches quite intently.
Banished to the backyard so the man can enjoy his breakfast without being stared at, the cat suddenly sprouts opposable thumbs, and one of the best moments of the spot finds the cat picking up a ball with ease thanks to his newfound dexterity and realizing he will now be able to do all sorts of things he couldn’t do before.
His feline friends in the neighborhood also grow thumbs, enabling them to thumb through books on military strategy (as well as file their claws and do needlepoint), and before long, the cats organize an army, and they’ve got only one thing on their minds–Cravendale milk!
Depicting a wonderfully imaginative offbeat scenario concocted by Wieden+Kennedy London creatives Sam Heath, Chris Groom, Hollie Sayers and Freddie Powell, “Cats With Thumbs” is the debut spot in a Cravendale campaign that takes small observations–in the case of “Cats With Thumbs,” it is “why do cats stare when you’re pouring milk?”–and milks them for drama, building up to absurdly intense conclusions. The idea is to play with the mismatched intensity that exists between people who, in general, don’t put much thought into the milk they buy, according to Heath, and the folks at Cravendale “who go to unique lengths to make their milk the best you can buy.”
We’ll see this premise played out in future Cravendale commercials–cats were featured in the campaign’s first spot because “cats felt like the stickiest thing to launch the campaign with,” Powell said.
Real cats were cast for the commercial despite the inconvenient fact that Heath is allergic to them. “I had to take antihistamines for a week before the shoot to build up immunity,” he shared with a laugh.
Out on a limb Weeks were spent training each of the felines to perform a particular activity such as playing with a ball or touching pages in a book.
In the meantime, London’s Artem constructed fake cat limbs seven times the scale of actual cat limbs.
Once the cats proved proficient at their tasks, live-action plates of the cats in action were shot at London’s Malcolm Ryan Studios, then a hand artist was shot manipulating the prosthetic cats limbs in front of a bluescreen.
It was up to MPC to seamlessly blend the live-action elements.
“Every take was carefully recorded and immediately pre-composited in FCP and Nuke on the set in order to assure that all of the elements worked nicely together,” MPC lead Flame artist and visual effects supervisor Kamen Markov explained.
After the final material was selected and cut by editor Russell Icke of The Whitehouse, London, MPC began the compositing process.
“We had to come up with a lot of creative solutions until the agency, the director and we were satisfied with the look and the performance of the cats,” Markov said, noting, “We tried to pay attention to all the small details, including finding and compositing the best eyelines, shoulder or head movements, little flicks and movements of the mouths, ears, winks, etc.”
Curry seasoning While MPC finessed the visuals, Wieden+Kennedy sought the perfect voice to narrate the commercial, and Curry, who in addition to acting onscreen is an in-demand voice actor, won the job with a delivery that builds in intensity.
Powell’s voice is also heard in the spot. Wave London engineer Jack Sedgwick took the Wieden+Kennedy creative’s meows and purrs and mixed them with those uttered by real cats to create all sorts of kitty noises.
The appropriately dramatic score accompanying the spot was composed by Multiverse through London’s Tonic Music Ltd.
Ultimately, “Cats With Thumbs” succeeds because the cats look and feel real.
Johansson actually won the job over other competing directors because he was insistent on capturing the felines in-camera as opposed to creating some CG cats.
“Even with the best CG we haven’t yet reached a point where you look at a completely CG-generated cat and believe it’s real,” Heath said. “You’re innately aware that something is digitally created, you know it’s not real, so you’re less invested in it. You don’t care as much or believe as much, and with a spot like this where you’re asking people to make such leaps, it would have stopped them from going along with us.”
Apparently, lots of people are willing to believe in “Cats With Thumbs.” The spot is airing on television in the U.K. but has found a worldwide audience on YouTube.
Posted on February 28, “Cats With Thumbs” had raked in nearly two million views and thousands of thumbs ups at press time.
Furthermore, the main cat in the spot–dubbed Bertrum Thumbcat–has become a social media darling, communicating with his fans via Twitter and Facebook.
