Would Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I have a dream" speech be as historically significant if no one had been there to hear it? Would Lou Gehrig’s words, "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth"—part of his farewell speech to the New York Yankees’ faithful—still bring tears to the eyes of baseball fans if he had spoken them in an empty stadium?
Alcatel, a French telecommunications firm, asked these questions in a campaign called "Speeches," out of Arnold Worldwide, Boston. And, as it turned out, lots of people were listening. "King" and "Lou Gehrig"—both presenting what appears to be authentic footage of the legendary speeches, sans audience—generated a considerable amount of controversy after their release this spring. While some applauded the powerfully visual way in which the spots depicted the importance of reaching people, others questioned the taste of using such sacrosanct images in TV commercials.
Positive or negative, the buzz has proven beneficial for Alcatel. With attention from such mainstream media outlets as CBS, NBC, and The New York Times and other newspapers, the company—previously unheard of in the U.S.—has become quite well known. And viewers remain fascinated. Thanks to the painstaking CGI work of director Rick Schulze of Industrial Light & Magic Commercial Productions (ILMCP), Los Angeles and San Rafael, Calif., the spots look startlingly real.
"King" begins with black-and-white footage of the civil rights leader giving his famous speech during the 1965 March on Washington for civil rights, at The Mall, in Washington, D.C. But as the camera pulls back and pans around the orator, the Mall is revealed to be deserted. Meanwhile, an intermittent voiceover states the message of the ad: "Before you can inspire … before you can touch … You must first connect." After the title card is shown, the spot cuts back to the Mall, with King delivering the "dream" line in front of a cheering crowd.
Similarly, "Lou Gehrig" starts with the ailing baseball great announcing his retirement shortly before his death from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, in an empty Yankee stadium; and ends with him telling the packed ballpark that he has "an awful lot to live for," as the voiceover states the importance of connecting.
"In both instances, the campaign honors great communication," states Stu Cooperrider, creative director/copywriter at Arnold, who devised the spots with associate creative director/art director Kristofer Salzer. "[The campaign] says, ‘This is a great piece of communication that fortunately was able to reach people and have a terrific effect. Imagine if it didn’t. That’s why Alcatel works so hard to make sure connections happen.’ "
As for the critics, Cooperrider notes, "In this business, you get a vocal minority. I think that’s who we’ve heard from more than anybody."
First Effort
When Cooperrider and Salzer came up with the campaign, Alcatel was a new client for Arnold Worldwide. The telecommunications company had previously been with Havas Advertising, Paris (which purchased Arnold last year), and was looking for a stronger presence in the U.S. "After they awarded us the job, we went about doing what [Arnold] calls ‘brand essence,’ " recalls Cooperrider, who has been with Arnold for nine years. "Essentially, it’s about six months’ worth of intensive interviews with customers and employees, where we try to find out what makes the company and the product great."
Since Alcatel’s greatness seemed to stem from "connecting with more of the world," Cooperrider explains, the team used "connections" as the basis for a four-hour brainstorming session at his Boston apartment.
"It’s amazing how much you can get done when you’re away from phones and the office," observes Salzer. "In those four hours, we came up with at least two of the three campaigns we wound up presenting to the client."
After Alcatel settled on "Speeches," Salzer and Cooperrider began to list potential speakers. "You really can sit down, and in five minutes come up with maybe twenty great instances of communication," Cooperrider relates. "Then you have to narrow the list down into different areas so you have a nice balance. Then you have to think about what [footage] would probably be available, and what wouldn’t. By the time you’re done, the list becomes very small."
King’s and Gehrig’s speeches fit all the qualifications, and the creatives were able to obtain approvals and permission to use them. "In both instances, the families needed to have creative approval each week," Cooperrider reports. "They would make comments, which we addressed, and they’d sign off on everything before we went any further. When all was said and done, despite the controversy, they were happy with the result."
Locating some of the key footage, however, proved unexpectedly difficult. "We found, with Lou Gehrig, that the terrific speech he made wasn’t preserved," reveals Cooperrider. "Out of what was probably a two-and-a-half-minute speech, there were maybe forty-five or fifty seconds on film. The rest was lost. We went through everybody—the UCLA Film Archive, the Yankees, The Baseball Hall of Fame. We even went to [director] Ken Burns, who did that terrific baseball documentary—and he hadn’t been able to find the rest of it either."
With the help of some clever camera work, an image of Lou Gehrig’s head was superimposed on a body double, and with the considerable talents of ILMCP’s Schulze, the team was able to make up for the missing Gehrig footage. "The existing footage was obviously locked-down. But we designed the spot so we start up close on him, but move further and further back," Salzer says. "That helped."
"We did have [Gehrig] on camera for the part of the speech that he delivers in the first scene," explains Schulze. "When we went to the second and third scenes, we were able to get away with using a body double. In the third scene, even though there’s technically a guy there, he’s only a pixel tall. So that was how we were able to get around it—you don’t see him talking."
Salzer adds that the Gehrig double, ballroom dance champion Karis Christensen, "was good because he was very body aware. He watched the footage of Lou Gehrig, and he was able to duplicate certain moves exactly."
According to most of the reviews, the spots consist entirely of historic footage with the crowds digitally deleted. But that is inaccurate. In the King ad, nearly everything is computer generated—the Mall, the podium, even the reverend himself. "The first five seconds use King’s original head from documentary footage, but we pasted it over a CG body in an all-CG environment," recounts Schulze. "As the camera pulls back and goes to the wider position, we segue to an all-CG head, too. Since we didn’t have that view of him from the side in the original footage, we had to go with the all-CG character." While CG characters, also known as synthespians, have been used for background extras in movies like Titanic, Schulze relates, "I don’t think they’ve ever been in long shots, duration-wise, where you are able to scrutinize it to the degree that you can in ‘King.’ Creating that character was really difficult."
To match the CG elements to the original, Schulze, who also directed the live action, and his staff of about 12 artists, replicated such intricate details as dirt flecks. "The original King footage was ILMCP shot off a live video feed," he notes. "There are a lot of hot spots on the screen, and you can see little reflections and a flicker in the ILMCP plate. Matching that flicker was difficult because everything was moving and different parts of the plate were flickering at different rates. We spent a lot of time on that."
Later this year, Arnold will create a brand-new Alcatel spot. And, while the creatives are keeping quiet about the details, it should generate interest among a whole new audience. "I would bet that it’s going to have something to do with the arts," Cooperrider hints.
