It’s amazing where your dreams can take you as we see in “Anthem,” a :60 stop-motion spectacle for Comcast created by Grupo Gallegos, Long Beach, Calif., and directed by Yuval and Merav Nathan, who are represented by Hollywood’s Acme Filmworks for spotwork in the United States.
One of three Spanish-language commercials directed by the Nathans as part of Comcast’s “Dream Big”-themed campaign, the spot, which is airing nationwide, finds a woman lying on a mattress dreaming up all sorts of fantastical scenarios that are played out right on the bed–we see her running through a field of clouds, swimming with fish in the deep blue sea, dancing the night away with a handsome man and getting caught in the wind with a red scarf around her neck.
There are clever touches in the spot–for instance, to signify that the woman is diving into the sea, the white sheet is replaced with a blue one, and the fish she swims with are actually white socks. Who knew white socks would make such convincing fish?
An accompanying song and supers explain that Comcast–with 50 channels in Spanish, 250 Spanish On Demand choices, the best HD picture, super fast Internet and hundreds of international minutes–brings you the world you’ve been dreaming of.
The inventive execution of the stop-motion spot was inspired by the similarly themed music video for singer Oren Lavie’s “Her Morning Elegance,” by the way. The clip earned Lavie and the Nathans, who directed the video with the singer, inclusion in the 2009 Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase.
“Perfect Fit” When creatives from Grupo Gallegos saw “Her Morning Elegance,” which also features a dreaming woman, they were eager to marry the stop-motion technique used in video with Comcast’s “Dream Big” message. “It was a perfect fit,” said group creative director Juan Oubiรฑa.
So the agency hired the Nathans. The agency first looked to the directors to determine whether the script for “Anthem” was workable. “We read it and gave our ideas and objections. To some they agreed and to others not,” Yuval shared. “It was important to us to use ideas that get the most out of the technique, using the mattress as a window to a wider world and to create fluent movement that plays with the timing, space and gravity.”
Once the script was settled, the Nathans created a detailed pre-viz. “So when we got to the shooting stage, we just had to shoot according to the prepared animation,” Yuval related.
The Nathans and their crew, including DP Billy Robinson, shot “Anthem” at Stokes/Kohne in Hollywood over the course of three days, casting actors who had experience in dance, and a great deal of patience. “It is a hard task to lie still for three days, letting other people move you all the time, and keep smiling,” Yuval acknowledged.
Stellar cast Dani Marco, the lead actress, appears onscreen almost constantly. “She was amazing,” Yuval praised. “She kept her optimism and positivism during the whole process. It is very hard to know how your actor will react to this situation.”
Thankfully, the actors had some comfort in that they were lying on a nice, thick mattress all day while they were being manipulated into various positions by the animators, which included Yuval and Guy Ben Shetrit as well as assistant animators Kevin Glick and Pete Levin.
While Yuval handled the animation, Merav served as production designer, giving the spot a handmade, crafty look. Art director Tricia O’Connell was responsible for the props.
The shoot itself was painstaking, of course, but it went smoothly. It help that the Nathans had recently done “Her Morning Elegance.” “We didn’t fall into the same traps,” Yuval said.
It should be noted that while “Anthem” is not a remake of “Her Morning Elegance,” the commercial does feature a few similar sequences. For example, both the spot and the music video find the women swimming in a sea populated by sock fish and being caught in the wind with red scarves around their necks.
Observing the “Anthem” shoot was “very interesting because, personally, for me, it was something new. It was a completely different way to shoot a commercial,” Grupo Gallegos creative director Martin Cerri said. “You have to pay attention to every little detail, and it’s a very hard process.”
All of the action was captured in-camera, with nothing but the supers and color correction done later.
As for the music, Cerri and his team wrote the lyrics to “Anthem,” and Ezequiel Flehner and Damian Minckas of Papamusic, Buenos Aires, composed and arranged the music, creating a modern, playful tune.
Oubiรฑa said it was particularly challenging to share all of Comcast’s attributes within the span of a :60, not to mention a :30 version. “Timing was crucial here, and it was complicated to create the song and coordinate the scenes with the lyrics of the song,” Oubiรฑa reflected. “They had to complement each other. It was like putting together a puzzle.”