“You’re not you when you’re hungry” has been a brilliant campaign from BBDO New York for client Snickers, making its first major splash during the 2011 Super Bowl with Betty White in a pickup football game, tackled and landing indelicately on a muddy field. It turns out Betty was really a guy who wasn’t himself because he was hungry. Thankfully a Snickers bar solves all that and he’s back to himself, ready to catch the pigskin.
White and assorted other celebs from Don Rickles to Joe Pesci and Robin Williams have been in the campaign to great effect. But recently BBDO NY went with a non-human star, casting Godzilla in a :30 appropriately titled “Godzilla.”
As we see in the commercial directed by Ulf Johansson of Smith and Jones Films, Godzilla is really a fun, charismatic dude who likes to waterski, ride all-terrain vehicles and play ping pong with his bros. He even dances at a party. But when Godzilla gets hungry he turns into, well, a monster, wreaking havoc on a town.
As BBDO began researching the character, it was discovered that a new Godzilla movie starring Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad fame was set for release in May. The agency contacted Warner Bros., the studio behind the reboot.
Old school, new school
Legacy Effects in San Fernando, Calif., and MPC NY teamed on a mix of old-school, new-school visual effects, respectively, to bring Godzilla to life for Snickers.
Like in the original movies, the Godzilla we see in the commercial is, of course, a guy in a Godzilla suit. The crew at Legacy Effects constructed the suit, consulting with Warner Bros. and relying on specs from Japanese film studio Toho, which owns the rights to the character.
“It’s made out of latex, and they actually put cornflakes in the latex to give [Godzilla’s skin] texture. That’s how they made the suits back in the 1950s,” according to BBDO executive creative director Gianfranco Arena, who added, “This one is a little bit more advanced. It looks like the suit from the ’50s, however, there’s some animatronics for eye movement and mouth movement.”
Once the beast was ready to go, Johansson and his crew, including DP Andrejz Sekula, shot Godzilla in action all around the Los Angeles-area over three days. While an actor/puppeteer was inside the suit and controlled the arms and legs, two puppeteers from Legacy operated the animatronic parts of Godzilla, moving his eyes, eyebrows, cheeks and ears. “Shooting was tough as someone had to be in the suit, and it took 30 minutes to get out, and the actor couldn’t stay in there for more than one to two hours,” Amy Wertheimer, BBDO group executive producer, shared.
It was important to both the director and the agency to shoot as much as possible in-camera with a real Godzilla on set. “Building a suit gave Godzilla an authentic look and feel as opposed to building Godzilla in CG after shooting. It allowed Godzilla to physically hang out with the guys, resulting in organic chemistry amongst them, so they’d feel as if they’d known each other and were true friends,” Wertheimer said.
There were a couple of instances, though, where scenes couldn’t be shot for real. It wouldn’t have been possible to have the guy in the Godzilla suit waterski, for example, so a water-skier, outfitted with Godzilla legs, was brought in to perform the stunt. That footage was later married together with green-screen footage of the rest of Godzilla’s body by the artisans at MPC New York.
By the way, that scene of Godzilla riding the all-terrain vehicle and making a jump was done for real, Arena pointed out. That’s impressive. “It seemed pretty easy when he did it on the day, but it took a lot of practice,” Arena said.
Editor Ian Mackenzie of Mackenzie Cutler was able to work a number of scenarios into the short timeframe without making things feel rushed.
Working with the Legacy team was an MPC ensemble which included VFX EP Justin Brukman, VFX producer Camila De Biaggi, VFX supervisor Alex Lovejoy, and VFX artisans Bill Dorais, Mikael Pettersson and Jonathan McKee. MPC deployed a Toolbox consisting of Flame, Nuke, Maya, PF Track and Photoshop.
