It started with a "less-is-more" request. "We had been shooting this behind-the-scenes footage of the cast and crew at the Pepsi commercials," recalls Michael Santorelli, co-founder and executive producer at Dogmatic, a bicoastal production/postproduction company. "Pepsi wanted to use that footage in some way to get more exposure on the web." Larry Shanet and David Rosenthal, who co-direct under the name Kranky through bicoastal Treat, Dogmatic’s commercial production arm, created and directed a mixture of Flash animation and live action weaved into a story, using the behind-the-scenes footage. Dubbed "The Pork Fizz Chronicles," the series consisted of 14 Web episodes that featured a pair of off-the-wall characters from the fictional company Pork Fizz. The two were attempting to steal footage from a Britney Spears shoot for Pepsi in order to use it in their own spots for the fictitious Pork Fizz soda.
The initial "The Pork Fizz Chronicles" gave way to a series of seven more Web installments, collectively called "The Pork Fizz Challenge," that featured MTV VJ and talk show host Ananda Lewis. The two sets of episodes streamed 450,000 times.
The success of that project led to "Britney and the Time Machine." This latest series broadened the concepts laid out in Pepsi’s Super Bowl extravaganza, "Now and Then," directed by Joe Pytka of Venice, Calif.-based PYTKA, out of BBDO New York. In that ad, the pop star takes viewers through the various Pepsi decades, from the 1950s through to the ’80s, appearing in clothing reminiscent of each era. In the new series of six Web episodes, Dogmatic worked on animated intros that depict a particular era. Larry Shanet served as creative consultant on the project.
"We’ve worked to create a whole other world beyond the commercial campaign," says Santorelli. The animation opens on a long shot of Britney’s tour bus as it makes its way down a desert highway. The bus pulls into an old-fashioned-looking gas station where an old-timer sits reading his paper. The pop princess walks around the side of the station to find a dusty Pepsi machine covered in classic Pepsi logos. She puts a nickel in the slot and the machine comes alive. The soda buttons offer a choice of eras, and she presses the top button, which reads "DooWop."
As she leans in to grab a soda, she is sucked into the machine. Flying through a spiraling time warp, Spears watches artifacts of the ’50s fly by (a classic car, James Dean, a jukebox). Sounds fade in and out, creating an auditory montage of snippets of songs from the era. A hole at the end of the time warp tunnel opens up into a behind-the-scenes montage of the production of "Now and Then," including cast interviews. The warp suddenly closes over the video footage, which now plays in reverse. Spears shoots back into the present, and finds herself standing at the gas station in front of the Pepsi machine. She giggles with delight and pushes each button, warping herself into the other musical eras. In the final episode, a cold Pepsi rolls out of the machine, which she grabs, letting out a satisfied sigh.
A MILLION STREAMS
The Dogmatic team conceived and produced the time travel-story for the Web, using behind-the-scenes footage filmed during production of the TV ad. The footage was shot by the directing collective of Coolbirth—David Landa, Cassady Benson and Michael Piliero—which is represented by bicoastal Treat, the commercial production arm of Dogmatic; Laurel Harris serves as creative director/executive producer for Treat. Cutting between Flash animation and live action, the Web episodes include interviews with Spears along with footage of rehearsals on the set.
The "Time Machine" Web series has proven to be a success—in the 24 hours after the Super Bowl, there were one million streams on the site that Pepsi had set up in conjunction with Yahoo! "Our ‘webisodes’ capitalize on the great talent working with Pepsi, and expand the campaign to a new level of visibility and access gained by the Internet," says Santorelli. "We’re taking advertising and branding to another entertainment level—one that spreads in a viral, underground way because of its fun and graphic spirit. It’s great for kids. The Web allows you to go offline and get more content. Young kids love to see the behind-the-scenes material, with Britney with her hair down. We had twenty-five hours of this stuff to choose from."
The six Pepsi Web episodes took four days to shoot and six weeks to animate. "Our in-house Flash team used ToonBoom, Flash 5, Avid Media Composer, Illustrator and Photoshop to bring all elements together for the Pepsi Web project," reports Nick Jones, executive producer of Dogmatic’s Emerging Media division. "Dogmatic uses a process we call ‘Omni Flash TMI’ [Total Media Integration] to achieve a true collaboration of both broadcast and Internet technologies."
The Web series "cross the line between commercial advertising and original online content," observes Harris. "While the webisodes lengthen the life of the commercial, they give further credence to the issue of convergence and combining the TV monitor with the computer monitor, which we believe is soon to come."
In the past, Santorelli notes, Dogmatic was strictly a live-action company. But hoping to take advantage of "the dot-com fallout when a lot of talented people would be hungry for work," Santorelli and Harris opened Emerging Media about a year ago. "We wanted to get into broadband entertainment," Santorelli explains. "Everything went sky high very quickly, as more clients out there discover what they can do with their Web sites." Now, Santorelli adds, Dogmatic is a hybrid between an agency and a production company. It produces in four areas: corporate imaging, electronic press release production, new media, and events production and planning.
Santorelli notes that plans exist to create more Web series for Pepsi. "It’s a great area to be in right now," he says. "For the client, having a Web site is like having your own TV station; it’s just a question of getting people to go there and look at the stuff. You want to get people thinking about your brand. It’s also very cost effective not having to shoot a 35mm commercial. As broadband becomes more available, there are a lot of things you can do now."
