A lovely night sky is highlighted by a blue moon. This idyllic scene is framed by a home’s window. A hand enters the scene and pulls the moon inside the house and places it on a canvas, at which point an artist goes to work.
We see the hand sketch and paint a design, using as its paint easel natural beer ingredients like hops and barley. The blue moon becomes the logo affixed to a glass full of Blue Moon Beer, standing next to a bottle. The hand cuts an orange and places a slice on the rim of the glass.
Below this picture–with deep shadows, golden light and a Rembrandt painting look–he writes a caption which simply reads, “Artfully Crafted.”
This combination of stop motion animation and CG was directed by Andrew Huang and Shaun Sewter of Moo Studios, Los Angeles, for agency Integer Group, Denver.
“The biggest challenge,” said Huang, “was integrating all of the various passes of footage that we made for each shot with the motion control camera. Becauset he Blue Moon ingredients were undergoing complex transformations from palette to canvas, we shot multiple passes of each take with the motion control rig in order to get a seamless and almost surreal, magical metamorphosis–a hand plucking the moon out of the sky as the sun rises in the distance, transforming barley into paint pigment or hop leaves into the shadow on the glass of beer…The challenge was orchestrating all of these elements to create a beautiful spot.”
The Integer Group team included creative director Dan Kiefer, associate creative director Brett Matarazzo, copywriter Brian Wilkens, director of integrated production Robert Stocking and producer Brooke Warren.
David Lyons exec produced for Moo.
Original music was composed by Andrew Feltenstein and John Nau of Beacon Street Studios, Venice, Calif. Adrea Lavezzolli produced for Beacon Street.
Does “Hundreds of Beavers” Reflect A New Path Forward In Cinema?
Hard as it may be to believe, changing the future of cinema was not on Mike Cheslik's mind when he was making "Hundreds of Beavers." Cheslik was in the Northwoods of Wisconsin with a crew of four, sometimes six, standing in snow and making his friend, Ryland Tews, fall down funny.
"When we were shooting, I kept thinking: It would be so stupid if this got mythologized," says Cheslik.
And yet, "Hundreds of Beavers" has accrued the stuff of, if not quite myth, then certainly lo-fi legend. Cheslik's film, made for just $150,000 and self-distributed in theaters, has managed to gnaw its way into a movie culture largely dominated by big-budget sequels.
"Hundreds of Beavers" is a wordless black-and-white bonanza of slapstick antics about a stranded 19th century applejack salesman (Tews) at war with a bevy of beavers, all of whom are played by actors in mascot costumes.
No one would call "Hundreds of Beavers" expensive looking, but it's far more inventive than much of what Hollywood produces. With some 1,500 effects shots Cheslik slaved over on his home computer, he crafted something like the human version of Donald Duck's snowball fight, and a low-budget heir to the waning tradition of Buster Keaton and "Naked Gun."
At a time when independent filmmaking is more challenged than ever, "Hundreds of Beavers" has, maybe, suggested a new path forward, albeit a particularly beaver-festooned path.
After no major distributor stepped forward, the filmmakers opted to launch the movie themselves, beginning with carnivalesque roadshow screenings. Since opening in January, "Hundreds of Beavers" has played in at least one theater every week of the year, though never more than 33 at once. (Blockbusters typically play in around 4,000 locations.)... Read More