We open on three male pub-goers who down glasses of Guinness with delight. But this seemingly slice of mundane life takes a sudden turn backwards as the guys start walking rapidly in reverse out of the watering hole–eventually winding, literally, in a watering hole hundreds of thousands of years ago.
On the way to this primitive destination are assorted stops along the evolutionary path. Their walk becomes a slouch as the men transform into Neanderthals, get frozen in the Ice Age, then turn into apes, primitive mammals, amphibians–with a glimpse of some dinosaurs along the way–and then finally we see three newt-like creatures drinking from a puddle. These newts, though, are clearly disgusted with their libation. It’s certainly a far cry from the Guinness to which they were accustomed as men, and the puddle doesn’t compare to a lively pub. The end tag message puts this journey into perspective: “Good Things Come To Those Who Wait,” which is Guinness’ time-honored slogan.
This sojourn back through time is a visual tour de force, with not only the three guys but their surroundings changing at warp speed. Modern buildings recede into different historical periods, concrete morphs into green landscape in an overhead like satellite perspective shot. A mix of live action, CGI, stop motion, stock footage and other visual tricks is sprinkled throughout the :60. Akin to the expression of one’s life flashing before his or her eyes, we are treated to seeing the evolution of earth and man–and man on earth–zip by in a minute. Talk about compression.
“Evolution” was directed by Daniel Kleinman of Kleinman Productions, London, for AMV BBDO, London.
Johnny Frankel produced for Kleinman Productions. The DP was Jess Hall.
The AMV BBDO team consisted of creatives Matt Dornan and Ian Heathfield, a.k.a. Matt & Ian, with Yvonne Chalkley serving as agency producer.
Visual effects were done by Framestore CFC, London, with William Bartlett the visual effects supervisor and Scott Griffin the effects producer. Lead animator was Quentin Miles, with Alex Thomas serving as Inferno artist, and Andy Boyd as CGI supervisor. Telecine was also done at Framestore.
Editor was Steve Gandolfi of Cut+Run, London (which also has bases of operation in New York and Santa Monica). Audio mixer was Johnnie Burn of Wave Recording Studios, London. Burn is Wave’s co-owner and creative director. He has mixed every Guinness commercial since 1998. This one, though, accompanied by a song sung by Sammy Davis, Jr., posed some daunting creative challenges.
“The picture runs backwards so we experimented with playing the audio backwards,” relates Burn. “But it sounded horrible. We eventually decided to use most of the audio playing forward but highlighted a few key moments by using reversed sound. Probably the bigger challenge however, was finding sound effects that instantly described momentous events in one second: the Ice Age happened over something like one-hundred-thousand years, but we only had one second to communicate it.”
