This spot takes us on a Dirty Jobs-like tour from a mine/landfill to a factory with smokestacks belching out pollution to a cargo ship moving across the ocean to a transport truck. Both the ship and the truck are gasoline driven, casting pollutants into the air.
The common bonds to these different sites is that the people working in them are miniature models and the product/cargo in each black-and-white scene is housed in pink containers. (Miniatures were set against the backdrop of real locations.)
The final venue is a retail store in which a man holds a pink container, his little daughter looking on. The camera reveals that the pink package contains an energy efficient light bulb, the irony being that so much negative environmental impact goes into the manufacturing and the transport of the eco-friendly bulb.
Two successive supers appear which read: “You’re doing your part”/”It’s our job to help government and industry do theirs.”
An end tag contains the panda bear logo of the sponsor, the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) of Canada.
The team of Woods+Low from OPC, Toronto, directed “Light Bulb” for agency DraftFCB, Toronto.
The DraftFCB team included creative director Robin Heisey, creative director/art director Joe Piccolo, creative director/copywriter Chris Taciuk, art director Oliver Brooks, copywriter Mike Richardson and producer Kelly Cavanaugh.
Harland Weiss exec produced for OPC with Donovan Boden serving as producer. Chris Woods was the DP.
Editor was Johnny Devries of School Editing, Toronto.
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