There was a time when journalists fed the news to the public. But that’s no longer the case in a digital age that finds tweeters and bloggers breaking stories. Well aware of the shift, the Guardian has embarked on a more modern form of newsgathering that has the venerable British newspaper relying on collaboration with outside sources. This approach is demonstrated in a clever re-telling of the classic Three Little Pigs fairytale.
Created by BBH London, the two-minute spot–also titled “Three Little Pigs”–is the work of director Ringan Ledwidge of London’s Rattling Stick, which also maintains an office in Los Angeles.
“Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has been doing an amazing job putting his open journalism methodology into action, but there’d been some issues articulating what the benefit was for consumers. The one thing that was absolutely clear to us was that in order to illustrate the importance of open platform collaboration and the Guardian‘s curatorial role in the process, we needed to do a product demonstration,” said BBH creative director David Kolbusz, noting, “Three Little Pigs was the most universal story we could find.”
While the Three Little Pigs as originally told is a rather simple tale, BBH’s version is a much more complex story involving murder, insurance fraud and mortgage defaults.
Social media chatter, newspaper clips, YouTube videos and other graphic elements appear throughout the spot, supporting the narrative, which takes surprising twists and turns.
“So many moving pieces meant retracing our steps every time we spotted something new,” Kolbusz said. “Sound, music, graphics and shot footage all needed to work together in perfect harmony.”
Ledwidge said he wanted the spot to feel like a film trailer and for it “not only to pose relevant questions but also to excite and entertain viewers. Tonally, I felt it should be played with a straight bat and that the comedy should be of a satirical nature rather than a broadly comedic one.”
Three pigs, two days
Remarkably, the director and DP Franz Lustig shot the action-packed “Three Little Pigs” over just two days–“two very long days,” Ledwidge specified–on location at London’s Old Royal Naval College, where they filmed courthouse and protest scenes, and at Wimbledon Studios, where they were able to take advantage of the facility’s pre-built courtroom and street sets as well as build three other sets in the main studio.
As we see in the commercial, the pig and wolf characters are human/animal hybrids, with human bodies and animal heads.
Kolbusz says the mix lent an air of “magical realism” to the spot, helping to create a believable reality so that the audience wouldn’t question why pigs and wolves walk among us.
The pig masks worn by the actors were built from the same mold used to create the pig heads worn in the Royal Ballet’s production of Beatrix Potter. “Nothing on the masks was animatronic, but with the body language of the actors alone you could sense each pigs’ character,” Ledwidge said.
Artisans from the London office of The Mill later created movement in the pigs’ eyes, ears and mouths, relying on film that had been shot of the actors rehearsing sans the masks to inform their characterizations.
“We knew that subtlety was the key in this job,” explained David Fleet, who was The Mill’s lead 3D artist on the job. “So looking at the tiny eye darts and mouth shapes of the actors proved extremely valuable reference when the animation process began.”
The Mill also seamlessly integrated the public discussion and newspaper coverage of the case into the spot, with one of the most impressive integrations finding a forensic specialist entering the three little pigs’ house and walking down a hallway onto which is a newspaper story is projected.
“With the graphics, we wanted to use elements of social media, popular websites and the Guardian that were instantly recognizable but integrate them so they always felt like part of the film,” said Gary Driver who served as The Mill’s lead 2D artist. “In the forensic scene, the shot had to be tracked in 3D so we could accurately project the graphics onto the walls. Certain elements were then rotoscoped and added back over the top to held bed the graphic effects in.”
The Mill also built the Wolf’s “huff and puff” animation test and performed other tasks, including various bits of clean up and set extensions.
Precise cut
Rich Orrick of London’s Work Post Film Editors cut “Three Little Pigs.” “The edit like every other part of the job was exhausting. There was barely anything left out as the board–due to the interaction of type–was pretty precise. The struggle was more the amount of layers we were dealing with, particularly as Avid isn’t great with type. Basically, it was a head scramble,” Ledwidge shared.
“Somehow,” continued the director, “Rich Orrick kept a calm head whilst I drove myself to distraction.”
“All of it was a monumental challenge,” Kolbusz said, looking back on the job.
“But every party involved,” he noted, “was so passionate about the film that they gave one hundred percent at all times to make sure it came off without a hitch.”
Review: Director Tyler Spindel’s “Kinda Pregnant”
We have by now become accustomed to the lengths some movie characters will go to keep a good comedy lie going. But it's still a special kind of feat when Amy Schumer, playing a baby-mad single woman who fakes a baby bump in "Kinda Pregnant," is so desperate to maintain the fiction that she shoves a roast turkey up her dress.
You might be thinking: This is too ridiculous. The stuffing, alone. But if we bought "Some Like it Hot" and "Mrs. Doubtfire," I see no reason to quibble with the set-up of "Kinda Pregnant," a funny and often perceptive satire on motherhood, both real and pretend.
"Kinda Pregnant," which debuted Wednesday on Netflix, is a kinda throwback comedy. Like "40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Wedding Crashers," you can basically get the movie just from its title.
But like any good high-concept comedy, "Kinda Pregnant" is predominantly a far-fetched way for its star and co-writer, Schumer, to riff frankly on her chosen topic. Here, that's the wide gamut of pregnancy experience — the body changes, the gender reveal parties, the personal jealousies — all while mixing in a healthy amount of pseudo-pregnant pratfalls.
It's been a decade since Schumer was essentially launched as a movie star in the 2015 Judd Apatow-directed "Trainwreck." But "Kinda Pregnant," which Schumer wrote with Julie Paiva, almost as adeptly channels Schumer's comic voice — the one that made the sketch series "Inside Amy Schumer" so great.
The movie's opening flashes back to Lainey (Schumer) as a child playing with dolls and imagining herself a mother-to-be. So committed is she to the role that Lainey, in mock-labor, screams at her friend and then politely apologies: "Sorry, but the expectant mother often lashes out at her support system."
But as... Read More