Following a quirky derivation of Moore’s Law, video games seem to double in quality and computing power every four years or so. And to the delight of teenagers and fraternity brothers everywhere, these technological leaps and bounds inevitably bring vast improvements in the way the video game player can kill, maim and otherwise disintegrate his cyber-enemies: Decapitation is a consistently improving crowd pleaser. And as for spontaneous combustion: It’s getting better each year!
TBWA/Chiat/Day, San Francisco seemingly recognized this important trend when it created the :30 "Inflato Glove" for Sony PlayStation. Promoting Sony’s new game "Ratchet and Clank," "Inflato Glove" is one of three spots directed by Noam Murro of Biscuit Filmworks, Los Angeles. Along with the :30s "Morphoray" and "Devestator," "Inflato Glove" delivers a violently humorous, real-life demonstration of video game gadgetry’s killing power in action. The sort of commercial that risks slipping into appalling "jackassery," "Inflato Glove" commendably manages to produce a level of subtlety one feels the Jackass juggernaut would be incapable of.
The spot opens on a close-up shot of a suburban front yard, where a moderately chunky young boy is standing in front of a vinyl sided wall and some landscaping. He’s dressed in a striped shirt typical of his demographic, and after a few seconds, he waves—all business—to the camera.
Seated on a riding lawn mower next to the boy is a blowup dummy of sorts. On closer inspection we see that the dummy is actually a very reasonable facsimile of the kid—right down to the close-cropped hair and the striped shirt.
A voiceover intones in amateur documentary fashion, "This is Corey: He’s helping us with our inflatable decoy test for ‘Ratchet and Clank’."
Just then, a casually dressed, goateed man (who looks like what you’d expect an American video game designer to look like) moves into the frame. He slips around the kid and shifts the lawn mower into gear. The tractor lurches forward, and off it goes!
As the camera pulls back, we see that the mower is headed straight out onto Willow Glen Lane, or whatever the street in front of the house happens to be named. As the mower rushes onward, Corey and the video designer guy go sprinting around to the side of the house in order to conceal themselves.
The tractor reaches the street, and just as it does, we hear an off-camera woman scream, "Corey!!!"
Ah, the unmistakable cry of a mother whose child appears to be doing something stupid. This primal holler is known for its mad ferocity among suburban youngsters from Long Island to Sangamon County, Ill., to the San Fernando Valley.
Now we hear an oncoming vehicle: A blue SUV plows its way into the frame—and then right into the mower—making a direct and vicious hit with breaks squealing and tires smoking. Corey’s mom comes running desperately across the lawn during the crash.
Not surprisingly, a small graphic has now appeared at the bottom of the screen reading, "Professional stunt, do not attempt."
Panning over to survey the damage, we see that the tractor, not to mention the blowup doll, has been savagely smashed up.
Corey and the video game guy—along with several other dudes who have appeared on the scene—take off running through one of the house’s back gates, presumably to escape the motherly wrath and indignation sure to be pursuing them zealously for the rest of the afternoon.
"Oh man!" the narrator exclaims, as we cut to around 10 seconds of obligatory video game footage.
"The Inflatable Decoy: One of thirty-six weapons and gadgets not fit for this world," a different narrator carries on. " ‘Ratchet and Clank’. Rated T for Teen. Live in you world, play in ours," the narrator finishes, as a final Play Station 2 graphic appears.
The TBWA creatives behind "Inflato Glove" are three-year veterans of the PlayStation account. Art director Lew Willig and copywriter Scott Duchon both indicated they were ready to try something different for this latest round of spots. "Instead of just doing a slick, dramatized game world," remarked Willig, "where you recreate the game footage and make reality out of that—we went with something more light hearted: We had the guys who supposedly invented the game go out and test their weapons in the real world."
"We were looking to take a really ‘lo-fi’ approach" added Duchon. "We thought it would be funny to test these weapons and then show the effects on video."
Duchon and Willig prepped for the project by paying a visit to game designers at Sony headquarters. "We met a bunch of developers who’d been working on this game for three years," said Duchon, "and we’re like: ‘What are we gonna do? We’re gonna take two hours out of our day to come up with an idea for a game that these guys worked on for three years.’ "
"We didn’t get a chance to play the game," Duchon continued, "but we saw all the worlds they created … and also the weapons. In the end, the developers loved the spots, and the fact that we made characters out of them."
Director Murro, both men said, was instrumental in bringing the project to fruition. "Initially we thought we were going to have to use mostly special effects, but Noam ended up choreographing live-action stunts for us," continued Duchon. What effects were needed were provided by Henry artist/online editor Paul Geiger, and rotoscope artists Steve Edwards and Gary Mortensen, all of Ring of Fire Advanced Media, West Hollywood, Calif.
For his part, Murro revealed that the most important aspect of "Inflato Glove"—as well as the other two spots in the campaign—was making the footage look like "found" material. This necessitated shooting on video in simulated amateur fashion.
The second key aspect, related Murro, was the timing. "We wanted to create a one-take execution, where there are really no cuts in it," Murro expounded. "And that made things quite complex—it involved creating not really a stunt, but a violent act that needed to be choreographed to a tee … without, of course, looking that way."
Murro revealed that he actually shot three takes for the "Inflato Glove" smash up scene, just to get the timing right. This impressed Duchon, who credited Murro with making the violent crash as unpredictable as possible. "It’s actually a little hard to see [the stunt] coming," asserted Duchon.
As for shooting "Inflato Glove" on location in a suburban neighborhood, Duchon said it was a madcap experience. "The stunt driver was crazy. He showed up in a ’65 convertible, with his little Betty on his arm and says, ‘Hold on baby I’ll be back in a minute!’"
"We didn’t know what would happen when he hit the lawn mower. Families were outside in lawn chairs watching, and we were just praying the lawn mower wouldn’t go flying through a house. After the first crash, the spectators packed up and backed away a little," Duchon laughed.
