The grass is always greener somewhere else–in this case anywhere else for a man who’s overworked and overwrought at the office. He looks longingly at his dog’s life in this promo that opens with the guy leaving home to go to work. Before heading out the front door, he tosses a ball to his dog. Instead of fetching, Fido opts to pee on the living room’s wood floor.
Nonetheless, his own duty calls and the man sets out for the workplace. Once there we see he’s beleaguered, with coworkers and supervisors dropping folder after folder full of paperwork for him to tend to.
Mercifully his day ends. But there’s no respite for the weary. He goes back home and opens the door to find the dog ripping up the couch.
Yet adversity sometimes begets inspiration, which leads our protagonist to the drawing board. Sketch after sketch and a series of mathematical and scientific formulas later, he’s created a “human suit,” which his dog can wear. The brilliant idea is for the dog to go to work in the man’s place–we see the canine’s head pop out from the top of the suit, which has mechanical arms and legs. In the getup the dog can walk like a human being, a bit hesitantly but he’s ambulatory nevertheless.
At the workplace, we see the dog excel, as the pile of paperwork on his desk goes steadily down. In fact, no one at the office seems to notice the difference–except to realize that the worker’s job performance has improved exponentially. In fact, the dog earns employee of the month honors and is promoted to an executive suite. He even drives a car, with a personalized license plate that reads, “TOP DOG.”
This is coupled with a role reversal at home. We see the dog in the human suit reading in bed–the man meanwhile naps on the couch like Fido used to. One night the switch is complete as the dog throws a ball to his former master, who smiles at the offbeat turn of events.
The word “IF” is then supered across the screen, with the “I” becoming the end of “Sci” and the “F” positioned as the beginning of “Fi,” which together form the core of the Sci-Fi Channel logo.
Indeed this “what IF” scenario is most entertaining, branding the channel as a place to expect the unexpected.
Titled “Human Suit,” this :60 was directed by Albert Kodagolian via RSA, London. (Kodagolian is repped stateside by bicoastal Believe Media). Shot over four days in Barcelona, Kodagolian got the chance to work with one of his favorite cinema stars, French actor Dominique Pinon (Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, Amelie). The other star was a dog named Cook. The scenes that required the dog to be in the human suit were accomplished by having an actor with a green mask over his head and then shooting plates of the dog to replace the man’s face in postproduction.
Kodagolian related that the project started “with an open brief from the Sci-Fi Channel which simply asked us to incorporate the word IF. The goal was to create a strong narrative that demonstrated the idea, ‘If you can imagine it, then it’s real.’
“It’s the second part of that sentence,” continued Kodagolian, “that excited me the most; the challenge of creating something fantastic and magical that is heavily rooted in reality and the casual poetry of the everyday.”
