A young man opens a door and enters an apartment building. A super sets the stage for us. It simply poses the question, “What if you could visit yourself in the future?”
The guy walks up a winding staircase and reaches his destination, an apartment–understandably with some trepidation. He takes a deep breath and knocks on the door, bracing himself for a glimpse of himself years from now.
The door swings open to reveal an ape man. Next come a series of quick cuts which reflect our young guy’s mind running wild, envisioning a planet-of-the-apes society. We see an ape at a news anchor desk, a gorilla president, and a military consisting of armies of monkeys. These are just some of the counter-evolutionary sights.
However this worst case scenario comes to an end when the ape at the door takes off his mask, revealing an older man. “Wow, it’s me,” he says upon seeing the young guy. “Hungry? Thirsty? Meet my friends.”
A series of supers put this slice of life into context, the first identifying the sponsor, “AMF Pension,” accompanied by the slogan, “More to live for.” The rest of the supers are more of a hard sales pitch, asking, “Have you picked the best pension fund?”; “We have the best results of all pension funds.”; “And we also have the lowest fees.” An end tag provides a Web site address for more info.
“The Planet” was directed by Jesper Ericstam through Social Club, a production house in Stockholm, Sweden, for agency Foresman & Bodenfors, Stockholm. (Ericstam is repped in the U.S. by Venice-based Backyard Prodcutions).
Producing for Social Club was Magnus Theorin, Production manager was Henrik Ludqvist. The DP was Carl Sundberg.
The agency team included copywriter Jacob Nelson, art driector Lotta Agerup, producer Magnus Kennhead, production manager Anna Chantre and project manager Leif Sorte.
Editor was freelancer Niclas von der Burg. Online editor was Johan Boije of STOPP, Stockholm. Colorist was Edward Negussie of Fireplace, Stockholm. Audio post mixer/sound designer was Martin Dahl of Housework, Stockholm. Music composer was Stockholm-based Tom Levin. Principal actors were Borje Ahlstedt and Claes Ahlstedt.