“T.A.G., you’re it.”
This schoolyard declaration takes on a new meaning when the playground is this year’s industry awards show circuit. Indeed T.A.G., the San Francisco agency which jointly works with sister shop McCann Worldgroup, San Francisco, on the Microsoft Xbox 360 account, has been the proverbial “it” as its “Believe” campaign promoting the release of video game Halo 3 on Xbox is among the season’s most lauded work, finishing in a tie for the coveted Film Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival and then winning outright the Cannes Fest’s Integrated Grand Prix honor.
The accolades go on and on, including three AICP Show honors for the Halo 3 centerpiece TV spot “Diorama” directed by Rupert Sanders of bicoastal/international MJZ with visual effects from Stan Winston Studios, Van Nuys, Calif., New Deal Studios, Los Angeles, and Method Studios, Santa Monica. There was also best of show at The One Show, a Grandy at the International ANDY competition, among other awards.
Hannah Murray, senior producer at T.A.G., reflected on the Halo 3 campaign experience, the assorted production challenges it posed and that were eventually overcome.
“The biggest challenge,” she said, “was that this was such a high profile game launch and the developer was trying to finish the third in the Halo series as we were doing the commercial. Because of that, it was difficult to get all the information we wanted from them. Those details were under lock and key no matter how many NDA [non-disclosure agreements] we signed. Understandably they were hesitant to hand all those secrets over to us.”
This presented an extraordinary dilemma in that authenticity was key with a target audience of Halo Nation, a large group of highly critical, knowledgeable Halo game aficionados.
Murray noted that she and her colleagues gleaned as much info as they could from multiple sources to compensate for not being able to access the proper 3D models of the characters from the game developers.
The agency and production team even managed to do an end-run and got the models which the developers sent to their toy franchiser. While that material was not as high res as it needed to be, the artisans at Stan Winston Studios were able to up-res them and started to create the miniature characters to place in the elaborate diorama being constructed for the shoot. Furthermore, Murray related that an enterprising line producer went out and bought Halo 2 dolls which were then modified to reflect what Halo 3 had in store.
Then a month into prepping, it was learned that one of the main characters (Brute) had the wrong measurements. The developers had made him a foot taller than originally thought. “We had to re-do about 100 Brutes,” recalled Murray.
Building the earlier alluded to diorama set was also a daunting task. Murray noted that it was done in four weeks, about half the time that should have been allotted for such an ambitious undertaking. Going into the project, Murray and her creative teammates weren’t sure what means would be necessary for the creation of the diorama–CG if it looked real was an option, for example.
“We were open to anything and Rupert [Sanders] came back with a stunning treatment,” recalled Murray. “His entire heart was into this project and he knew we had to build this set. Thankfully, though, New Deal had worked on one of the Aliens films and some of the Halo 3 architecture had been influenced by the architecture in the Aliens work. New Deal had some of those models so we didn’t have to create something entirely from scratch.”
Still there were more hiccups to come. After the buildings were constructed, it was discovered that the actual game was going to have slightly different pillar structures. By that time, it was too late. Still, Murray noted that their saving grace was that they stayed true to the Halo spirit and that came through in the end.
“One of the game’s product managers,” recollected Murray, “came down to look at the diorama and said, ‘you guys just nailed it. It’s amazing.’ That brought out a major sigh of relief from all of us.”
Among the other assorted challenges were the “making of” film and the music for the spot. On the former front, Murray recollected that an inexpensive HD camera was purchased to lens behind the scenes in closed off top secret areas at the studios. “Getting the camera into certain places was a huge challenge because so much of what we were shooting was being kept under wraps.” Furthermore the “making of” film was supposed to be set 500 years into the future, necessitating tight shots that wouldn’t reveal some of the present day surroundings.
As for music, the good news is that the temp track was a public domain composition, Frederic Chopin’s Prelude in D Flat Major, Op. 28, No. 15 (a.k.a. the Raindrop piece). But there was still a hurdle to clear.
“Everyone fell in love with the track we found but we could not figure out who played it–even after enlisting the help of a musicologist and a researcher,” said Murray. “So we ended up having to re-record it.”
Robert Miller and Jason Johnson of Santa Monica-based stimmung arranged the solo piano piece which was performed by pianist Mike Lang. A top concert pianist, Lang was well versed in Chopin but the performance didn’t quite match what the agency creatives had originally heard. It turns out that the proper piano wasn’t used.
“So we went piano shopping,” said Murray, “and played the track we loved from our iPod so that the guy at the store could tell us which piano we should rent. Once we rented the special concert piano, we had to have a piano tuner race out to tune the piano immediately. We ended up doing another session the next day with the same pianist and it was perfect.”
“It’s Mine” Coca-Cola’s “It’s Mine” scored three AICP Show honors (in the Production, Visual Effects and Animation categories) and most recently earned a primetime commercial Emmy nomination.
Directed by MJZ’s Nicolai Fuglsig for Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore., with visual effects by The Mill New York, the charming Coke spot shows a clash of larger than life Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons as they pursue an elusive bottle of Coca-Cola (also a balloon). In the end, the ultimate underdog, Charlie Brown, comes away a winner. The spot debuted during this year’s Super Bowl.
Wieden senior producer Matt Hunnicutt noted that there were varied major challenges, perhaps the most daunting being, “This wasn’t just any parade. It was the Macy’s Parade which people hold near and dear to their hearts. We made sure we were there for the parade to not only shoot that day but to absorb the magic and make sure it was captured and reflected in the commercial. Being there we got a better understanding of how these balloons move. Sheena [Brady who along with Hal Curtis were Wieden’s creative directors on the job] and I were even on hand for the [balloon] inflation evening, studying how those balloons are inflated so that we could better understand the physics of all that.”
Brady added, “Matt worked with Nicolai and the production company to create these real balloons and we didn’t even end up using them. We didn’t know until we got deeply into the process that CG would be the route we’d ultimately go [with The Mill]. I worked with Nicolai before and he was the perfect director for this. He has so much energy and perseverance. You know he’s going to figure it out no matter how difficult the challenge. All his spots have this epic beautiful cinematic quality to them.”
Hunnicutt observed, “What attracted me to Nicolai was his enthusiasm. He was excited about this project on every single level. The truth of the matter is that it was really directed twice, how we shot it in New York, shooting plates and telling the story throughout, finding the best visuals and angles. We were not only telling the story of the balloons but also the story of the city.
“Then,” continued Hunnicutt, “we were working with The Mill and directing those CG balloons. If the balloons don’t work, if their authenticity is questioned for one moment, then the spot fails and the power of the idea is lost.”
Indeed Super Bowl XLII delivered surprise victories for the N.Y. Giants and perennial loser Charlie Brown.
Pio Schunker, VP of creative excellence, North America, for The Coca-Cola Company, related, “We had a fortunate circumstance in that the spot fell exactly in the deciding quarter of the game where the underdog in the Super Bowl came through. The commercial with Charlie Brown sort of nailed it in that respect. That helped the spot become even more the topic of the water cooler conversation the day after the Super Bowl.”
Carried away In FedEx’s “Carrier Pigeons,” which also debuted on this year’s Super Bowl, a young hotshot clerk thinks he has solved his office’s shipping needs by deploying carrier pigeons. But what about large shipments? No problem–he has assembled a fleet of giant pigeons that wind up wreaking havoc throughout the city.
Like “It’s Mine,” the FedEx commercial–directed by MJZ’s Tom Kuntz with visual effects from Framestore, New York, for BBDO New York–garnered a primetime Emmy nomination.
Elise Greiche, BBDO New York executive VP/executive producer, observed that the most pressure came from “Carrier Pigeons” being for the Super Bowl.
“You want to do a great ad for the biggest stage of all,” related Greiche. “You want to create compelling work and content for the client. And then to get a great response after the Super Bowl and later an Emmy Award nomination is about as good as it can get….Recognition from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences is a different kind of honor than an advertising industry award. Different sets of eyes are judging the work–and their focus is totally on content and entertainment.”
Two years earlier, FedEx’s “Stick” won the primetime Emmy Award. Greiche produced that spot and found the Emmy honor most gratifying. She related that gravitating to Kuntz and Framestore for “Carrier Pigeons” came naturally. Framestore, for example, handled the effects on the dinosaur-laden “Stick.”
“And Tom Kuntz is amazing,” assessed Greiche. “He had everything we were looking for in a director–the humor, the visual effects background, the dialogue performance direction. Getting that performance is so important to all of the FedEx work we’ve done over the years.”
Perhaps the biggest challenge, noted Greiche, was finding the right downtown Los Angeles location and getting the proper clearances “to produce mayhem on the streets. We had a crane, 200 extras, were battling daylight and various restrictions but ultimately MJZ came through in getting what we needed.”
And there’s the inherent challenge of working with animals. While the huge carrier pigeons were CG creations, the small ones in the mailroom were the real deal. “That’s always an adventure,” laughed Greiche.
