There are some people who always have to have the latest innovations in home entertainment; the best sound system, the newest DVD player. We’re talking about the person who invites everyone over to watch the Super Bowl to boast about the superlative image quality of his new flat screen TV. It was for these electronic enthusiasts that Young & Rubicam (Y&R), New York, created a magical spot for the Sony Home Entertainment Group’s FD Trinitron Wega Flat Screen TV.
The :60 "Kite" opens on an exterior shot of a quaint shop called Joy, Mirth & Merriment. Its windows are filled with memorabilia and toys that are half a century old. The POV shifts to inside the shop where a boy enters the store, sounding the bell above the door that alerts the shopkeeper that a new customer has entered. The store owner’s mystical, playful eyes follow the boy who peers up in wonder at the toys hanging from the ceiling—a parachuting toy soldier, the belly of a white dove. This action is underscored by eerie piano music, which suggests curiosity and foreboding. The boy spies a red pinwheel near the counter and picks it up. When he does, a ball of string falls to the ground and rolls in the direction of a small wooden stage with a red curtain. The shopkeeper seems pleased as he watches the boy pick up the string and follow it through the curtain into a surreal, outdoor world. The boy steps out onto a vast, green field and looks around. Everything is perfectly still. The leaves on a tree don’t quiver, the bright red banners adorning a castle in the distance lay lifeless, and the most impressive image—rows and rows of red pinwheels as far as the eye can see—don’t spin in this windless world.
The boy walks further into the field, squinting at a strong glare up ahead. A closer look reveals the shopkeeper standing next to a Sony Wega Flat Screen TV, the sun reflecting off the shiny silver box. Embodying the aura of a wizard, the man points the remote control at the television and an image of a windmill appears onscreen. The windmill’s vanes begin to rotate rapidly creating such a forceful wind that everything outside the television’s environment is affected. The grass ripples, a tree swing blows, the red banners crawl up the castle, and every single pinwheel twirls at a dizzying speed. A yellow kite appears on the end of the string that the boy holds and whooshes up into the air as the music swells with emotional triumph. Another look at the TV reveals the boy now on the screen, running through the field of pinwheels in youthful ecstasy as the kite flies high behind him. The voiceover intones, "With Wega, we don’t watch TV, we feel it. In a place called Sony." The tag fades up, "Sony Wega. Dream on."
"Based on some research, we discovered that people who were really into Sony products were described as having this extra entertainment chromosome so we wanted to develop a place called Sony where these wonderful heightened experiences happened," explained Y&R associate creative director/art director Paul Safsel of the thinking behind "Kite."
Safsel, along with Y&R associate creative director/copywriter David McMillan, developed the idea of using the red curtain in the shop as a portal to the Sony world. In so doing, the possibilities of what lay behind the curtain became infinite. In fact, at press time, the team was working with New York-based Final Cut USA editor Kirk Baxter on cutting two additional spots for the campaign, but would only say that the subsequent behind-the-curtain scenarios were each "very different." In the case of "Kite," the world behind the curtain is a depiction of the boy’s imagination.
In order for the spot to come off magical without being gimmicky, there needed to be elements of mysticism and surrealism mixed with joy and wonder. This tall order was brought to director Mehdi Norowzian of bicoastal/international Chelsea Pictures. "Mehdi’s film is spectacular to look at and we felt that when you go behind the curtain, you need to see something fantastic," said McMillan, who added that Norowzian doesn’t "cheat." "A lot of things that anybody else would have to do CGI, he does in camera," McMillan continued.
Norowzian, who helmed the commercial through Chelsea Pictures in conjunction with his London-based production company Joy Films, was the one who suggested adding pinwheels to the script. "The original story is the boy goes behind the curtain and he’s standing in a field that isn’t moving. Mehdi brought up the question, ‘By looking at the field, how do you know the wind isn’t blowing? You have to bring in something to telegraph that something should be moving, but isn’t. Why isn’t this toy working?’ " said McMillan, recalling Norowzian’s logic.
But convincing the client to let Norowzian put thousands of pinwheels in a field was a feat all by itself. Instead of filming a few rows of red pinwheels and multiplying them in post, Norowzian insisted on having 2000 pinwheels made to his color and size specifications and then placed in a field on each day of the shoot, an action that took five hours each time. Not only that, but the pinwheels’ wings needed to be taped down so they wouldn’t move for the shot when everything was still, and then unleashed for the big moment when the wind sweeps through the field. Norowzian shot for three days in Valladolid, a remote Spanish town north of Madrid.
"I was a bit nervous because here I had all these pinwheels in a field. The client and the agency are standing there on the first day of the shoot and I’ve spent all this money and I have in my head how it’s going to work, but they don’t look so sure," recalled Norowzian.
The beginning memorabilia shop scenes were done in London’s East End at an existing perfume store that Norowzian’s art department redressed with old television sets and toys. Next, the production moved to Spain where Norowzian had parts of the shop rebuilt to sit on the field so when the boy comes through the curtain, he is physically exiting the shop and walking onto the grass.
While Norowzian’s work on "Kite" is by itself rich and serene, the work of Amber Music, London and New York, composer Robert Miller and sound designer Ross Gregory, helps to heighten the spot’s cinematic feel. The beginning piano score as the boy walks into the shop has a creepy, mystical quality. The transition from when the boy picks up the pinwheel to the point where he approaches the curtain contains an interesting sound derived from the musical saw. The spot then gets relatively quiet where we hear almost nothing, and then the swooshing of the wind, until the end of the spot where a swelling, emotionally charged gesture powers the moment when the kite takes flight. "In the beginning it was a fairly standard orchestral score," recalled Y&R music producer Josh Rabinowitz. "So we wanted an instrument that was beautiful, but not standard, and Robert suggested the [musical] saw," related Rabinowitz.
Perhaps the most rewarding moment on the entire project came during the last day of the shoot in Spain. According to McMillan, the entire town, which consisted of 200 people, had turned out to watch the shoot. The sun was setting, Norowzian yelled, "wrap!" and proceeded to hand a red pinwheel to every child in the town. "As we were pulling out of town, McMillan recalled, "we saw they all had put their pinwheels in their [play area] sandbox."
