This CGI spot from animation studio DUCK in Los Angeles for client Safeway supermarkets and agency DDB Chicago opens on a grocery store checkout line where a female customer places assorted gift cards she has purchased on the cashier conveyer belt.
As each gift card reaches the price scanner, it morphs into different merchandise. For example, a Home Depot gift card transforms into a nifty electric drill. A Toys R Us gift card morphs into a sophisticated toy robot. And an iTunes gift card changes into a hard driving rock band in concert.
Gift bows animate around the products as a voiceover informs us that with more than 250 gift cards to choose from at your Safeway family grocery store (which includes such supermarkets as Vons, Safeway Genuardis, Dominics, TomThumb, Randalls and Carrs), “there’s one place that will help you check off your grocery list and your gift list.”
We then see the woman in the supermarket parking lot, driving off in her compact car, with the rock band in the backseat
The tag in the case of the Vons branded store is simply, “Vons. Ingredients for life.”
Different versions of the spot were produced to reflect the different grocery store chain brands under the Safeway family umbrella.
The CGI spots were directed by Lane Nakamura and Jan Chen (a.k.a. Lane & Jan) of DUCK. Their support team at DUCK included executive producer Mark Medernach, producer Daniel Ridgers and postproduction artisans Melissa Timme and Joe Kim.
The work was modeled and animated using Autodesk Maya. Compositing and post were done in Adobe AfterEffects.
The agency team consisted of creative director/art director Sonja Olson, writer Allen Rubens and producers Bud Johnston and Cary Potterfield.
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