The next time you complain about how little your client is willing to spend to produce a spot, consider this: Sony gave Dubai-based Tonic Communications a mere $80,000 to fund the making of a :30 commercial introducing its WEGA Television to the Middle East and Africa.
On top of having little money to spend on the production, Tonic Communications faced additional challenges, creative director/copywriter Vincent Raffray said, citing, for starters, the fact that the spot was scheduled to run before and during the FIFA World Cup, and because Sony was not actually a sponsor of the event, the agency had to carefully craft a concept tied to soccer that didn’t infringe of any FIFA World Cup sponsorship deals.
Another issue: the Sony spot would be running in vastly different regions of the world, with different cultures, languages and regulations governing what can and can’t be shown on television. Therefore the spot had to be visual and had to cross cultural and religious boundaries, Raffray shared.
Taking all of these matters into consideration, Raffray and art director Peter Walker ultimately came up with “Kick,” a simple visual demonstration that finds two guys kicking around a small TV set as if it is a soccer ball in an urban setting. One of the men balances the TV on his head, lets it fall to his foot and then kicks it against a wall. Upon impact, the TV set smashes into pieces. The spot ends with a quick product shot of an unharmed Sony WEGA, accompanied by the supered message, “Make room for WEGA.”
Director Adrian de sa Garces of Velocity Films, which has offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg (as well as a stateside affiliation with bicoastal/international Crossroads through Velocity@Crossroads), was hired to direct “Kick.” “He had some good work on his reel, and he was young and hungry,” Raffray said, adding, “Velocity bent over backwards for us and did a great job considering the meager budget.”
The director was game to tackle the challenge of making the spot. “I wanted to ensure that the public asked, ‘How the hell did they do that?’ “
So how did they do it? Are these guys really kicking a TV around? No. A weighted ball was substituted for a TV during the shoot and later replaced with a TV in post thanks to the work of Condor Cape Town VFX supervisor/3-D artist Matthew Desmond-Smith, and Inferno compositor Sarah Houghton of The Refinery, Johannesburg.
De sa Garces and DP Peter Tischhauser shot the spot on location in Johannesburg. “We decided to shoot in South Africa for a few reasons,” Raffray said. “Firstly, I am from South Africa, and I’ve always enjoyed shooting there. The crews are extremely professional, and the locations are awesome. Some parts of Johannesburg look like Europe, other parts look like the States, and some parts look like downtown Nairobi. It’s also relatively cost effective, and the production values far surpass anything you can find in this region.”
Finding talent in Johannesburg wasn’t a difficult process given that South Africans love soccer, according to Raffray. One of the guys in the spot actually plays for a league team in South Africa, while the other guy does soccer tricks for a living.
“They did take after take with the [weighted] ball, which, incidentally, was not easy to handle,” Raffray said. “Out of about twenty takes, we had about four that we could use.”
The editing process was, well, there wasn’t really an editing process. “Because it was basically one shot, there was no editing–just merging the action with the TV crashing into the wall,” Raffray explained.
As for the visual effects work, “The outcome was fantastic,” Raffray praised. “The computer-animated TV looked so real, and when combined with the live action the result was truly believable.”
The sound design, done by The Refinery’s Louis Enslin, who also performed the audio mix, enhanced the believability. “Sound design was tricky because no one actually knew what a TV being kicked sounded like, so we strung one up and started kicking it,” Raffray said. “Once the sound was put in, everything fell into place. The sound was so important because it added weight to the TV and made the spot even more believable.”
The fact that Sony’s “Kick” was chosen as a Top Spot of the Week was particularly meaningful to Raffray, who co-founded Tonic a little over two years ago and is on a mission of sorts to show the world that good work can indeed emanate from the Middle East. “We wanted to create an agency that would compete on a global level, and being in the Middle East–not the most creative place on Earth–a lot of people thought we were crazy,” Raffray said.
Certainly, Raffray and company are proving the naysayers wrong, winning, among other accolades, Gold at The One Show and Gold at the Cannes International Advertising Festival in its first year for a Sony print ad entitled “Paperclip.”
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More