If HAL had known the Intel Pentium 4 (P4) processor, he’d have been a different machine altogether. As a new ad for the chip-maker attests, the P4 is central to the advanced digital entertainment world, making PCs capable of outputting captivating audio and video. The first in a three-spot campaign, "Digital Discovery" was created by Messner Vetere Berger McNamee Schmetterer/Euro RSCG (MVBMS), New York, and directed by Larry Bafia of Palo Alto, Calif.-based PDI/DreamWorks (PDI/DW). The spot broke nationally Oct. 8, and will air worldwide.
"Digital Discovery" opens as a disc-shaped spaceship is hurtling past Earth. A super informs us that the "Earth Technology Mission" is underway. Inside the ship, we find several gray-blue extraterrestrials with enlarged heads and no hair. One looks skeptically at a CD, while another tosses what looks like a camera into the trash, so thoroughly unimpressed is he with the technology. Cut to a third alien, who sits at his computer terminal, gazing with boredom at the static image on the screen. Next to him is a small video camera. A fourth E.T. approaches him, carrying a tray with various objects, such as a joystick. The E.T. at the computer looks the tray over, pausing with curiosity at a P4 chip. "Hmm, Pen-Ti-Um," he says, sounding out the name on the label. A close shot on the chip, and then the alien places the P4 into his intergalactic disk drive. Immediately, energy radiates from the P4, and the monitor glows brightly. Then the entire spaceship comes alive as monitors drop from the ceiling and compelling video and music is pumped into the spaceship. (Designers at Tröllback & Partners, New York, generated the images within the monitors.) The aliens are clearly impressed. The guy with the tray drops it, and another E.T. waves to his cohorts to come over and check it out. A voiceover then offers: "Discover the most amazing audio and video with the Pentium 4 processor. It’s the center of your digital world."
In the second P4 spot, "Digital Transformation," the aliens discover some photos from a Paris vacation. Finding the female earthling who poses in front of the Eiffel Tower to be "a total turnoff," according to Bafia, the aliens begin manipulating her image with a digital painting program powered by the P4. "They remove her hair and nose, and paint her blue so she looks like them," Bafia explained. "The model we used was so impressed when she saw what she looks like when she’s blue, she asked for prints." A third spot, tentatively titled "Digital DJ," is currently in production.
According to MVBMS creative director/art director Simon Nickson and creative director/ copywriter Drummond Berman, Intel wanted to position the new Pentium 4 processor as the "chip of the moment." They chose to focus on the fact that people everywhere have embraced the digital entertainment realm, and that the P4 can improve that platform. "People are literally doing home movies and burning CDs [on their PCs] and the whole medium is coming to light," Nickson explained.
Using aliens to get the message across appealed for two reasons, added Berman. For one, he said, Intel has a history of using "a big icon that gives them a canvas to tell any story. It gives them legs for the future." As well, aliens are generally perceived as highly evolved beings. So there is an inherent implication in showing E.T.s that are impressed with the P4: the technology must also be advanced.
Testing, Testing
Since work on the campaign began in the first quarter of this year, the agency and client conducted numerous tests on everything from the design of the alien characters to the perception of the Pentium processor in overseas markets. By the time Bafia and his team at PDI/DW got hold of the assignment, MVBMS had general ideas about what the characters would look like and what the spots would encompass. But the CG studio determined what design would be practical in an animation environment and also fleshed out the storylines. Relying on its proprietary Shrek software and techniques, PDI/ DW also went to work on developing realistic skin and clothing for the aliens, as well as the authentic environments and devices seen in the ad, such as the video camera and CD—all things that would "help take the ad away from a cartoon world," Bafia noted.
"We also went into the animatic phase pretty quickly," he continued. "The storylines are pretty complex, and the [first] ad has to introduce an environment and illustrate the mood swing from boredom to excitement, and also explain that the chip has all these capabilities."
Nickson noted that working in the CG format was "a double-edged sword" because of the flexibility the platform allows. "You need discipline, compared to live action, because you’re making crucial decisions throughout every stage." Added Berman, "Every square inch of the screen has been agonized over, and you can change things up to the end. So you have to fight off suggestions at the eleventh hour to change things that no one in the real world will notice."
Bafia also underscored the significance of audio in a computer-generated campaign. Sound designer Stephen Dewey of Machine Head, Venice, Calif., "brought a lot of things to life in the spot," the director said. "The alien voices were very important, and he did a lot of ambient things for the contrast between the boredom sequences and the scenes after they discover the chip. All those things you take for granted but that are so important." (The music for "Digital Discovery" was composed by Garron Chang of HUM Music + Sound Design and SubZero, Santa Monica.)
For Bafia, the opportunity to work on multiple spots in a single campaign proved most rewarding. "It’s always a lot of fun when you have the opportunity to expand on the characters’ personalities," he explained. "By the end of one spot, you get the idea of what the characters are about. But [with multiple ads] it’s sort of like doing a TV series. On the next spot there’s baggage where the characters are concerned. You get the chance to develop that and the [subsequent] ads become much more performance-based."
