The JWT/Paris campaign for Nestlé’s Kit Kat, which will eventually send two lucky contest winners on a trip to outer space, began with an animated 3D viral video ad that suggests the ultimate prize after a frazzled employee eats a Kit Kat bar and rides an elevator to the top of his building, which provides an inspirational glimpse to the edge of the universe.
Ultimate Break Quest, the two minute fifty second video playing at www.kitkat.fr, YouTube and Daily Motion, which was produced by Akama Studio/Paris, repped by Wanda Productions/Paris, is the backbone of a campaign that introduces a new version of the familiar candy bar. “2008 may be the year of many things, one of them being the release of a new Nestlé’s Kit Kat bar,” said Stéphane Billard, the associate director at JWT/Paris. “It’s the first change of recipe since it was introduced in 1972.”
The agency introduces the new candy bar by focusing on the concept of a break. “Everyone has in mind a personal break, so we let them think about the ultimate break,” Billard said. “The spot is an invitation for them to take a break.”
The main character in the video, a young man hard at work at his desk, staring into his overwrought computer, decides to take a break. He walks down a hallway, past an array of interesting co-workers, from a pair of idealistic twins to a blonde bombshell who bends over as he walks by, until he reaches a Kit Kat vending machine. His eyes light up after he takes a bite and suddenly he is on an elevator riding to the top, where he is blinded by the light as the doors open. He smiles idealistically as the spot concludes.
The humor comes from the bizarre characters, the office worker having an oversized head and bulging eyes, who proceeds through the office with a forlorn look. “The hero should be fragile, stressed, but friendly,” said Alexandre Ada, Akama Studio’s art director. “Big eyes deliver more emotions.”
“All the animation was hand made, we didn’t use motion capture because we wanted to design a very specific style for the film and give more character to the acting,” he said. The hand drawn animations were rendered into film using Maya, Max, After Effects and Zbrush.
The film is the first phase of a campaign that will also run on TV with a shorter version and radio. Visitors to the site are invited to produce their own ultimate break videos. The producer of the best one, as well as the winner of an instant game on Kit Kat packaging, will win a trip to outer space, which will be provided by Rocketplane, an American company that flies an aerospace vehicle into space that reaches an altitude of 330,000 feet (60 miles).
The film began playing online Jan. 24. The TV campaign launches Feb. 15.
There seems to be two messages to the Ultimate Break Quest campaign. “Everyone can recognize the main character, we all know that kind of job is stressful and we know he needs a break, so we empathize with him,” Billard said. The second message is the idea of space travel, which the character’s journey provides. “The ultimate break links with space travel, it’s a good way of capturing people,” he said.
Raoul Peck Resurrects A Once-Forgotten Anti-Apartheid Photographer In “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”
When the photographer Ernest Cole died in 1990 at the age of 49 from pancreatic cancer at a Manhattan hospital, his death was little noted.
Cole, one of the most important chroniclers of apartheid-era South Africa, was by then mostly forgotten and penniless. Banned by his native country after the publication of his pioneering photography book "House of Bondage," Cole had emigrated in 1966 to the United States. But his life in exile gradually disintegrated into intermittent homelessness. A six-paragraph obituary in The New York Times ran alongside a list of death notices.
But Cole receives a vibrant and stirring resurrection in Raoul Peck's new film "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found," narrated in Cole's own words and voiced by LaKeith Stanfield. The film, which opens in theaters Friday, is laced throughout with Cole's photographs, many of them not before seen publicly.
As he did in his Oscar-nominated James Baldwin documentary "I Am Not Your Negro," the Haitian-born Peck shares screenwriting credit with his subject. "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is drawn from Cole's own writings. In words and images, Peck brings the tragic story of Cole to vivid life, reopening the lens through which Cole so perceptively saw injustice and humanity.
"Film is a political tool for me," Peck said in a recent interview over lunch in Manhattan. "My job is to go to the widest audience possible and try to give them something to help them understand where they are, what they are doing, what role they are playing. It's about my fight today. I don't care about the past."
"Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is a movie layered with meaning that goes beyond Cole's work. It asks questions not just about the societies Cole documented but of how he was treated as an artist,... Read More