Words you don’t want to hear as the designer of these marketing commercials: “Back to 1 for Take 2.”
“Tipping Point,” for Guiness beer
In the case of the award-winning Honda commercial below, “Take 2” was a distant memory by the time the shooting was complete. Without aid of computer-generated graphics, the crew took 606 attempts costing $6 million and three months. This 2007 ad for Guinness, a veteran at creative commercials, which cost about $20 million and was filmed in segments, some of which took about 15 takes each. Both seem significantly more complicated to set up than the 2005 ad for Sony Bravia involving superballs, but not so Sony’s latest installment in their “Colours” campaign for the LED TV. “Play-Doh” took three weeks to shoot the stop-animation short movie, with 40 animators working with over 2.5 tons of modeling clay.
“Cog,” a 2003 award-winning Honda commercial
On the other end of the production spectrum, there is “How We Met,” a bit of body art animation depicting stick figures falling in love while falling over bodies. The film took four days and 1622 still photos to complete, running through a dozen pens and even more makeup remover kits. I wrote about a similar kind of technique being done with colored t-shirts for Erbert & Gerbert’s Sub Club. Considerably cheaper to engineer.
“How We Met,” a love letter in film form
Finally, there is the work of Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss, who in 1987 built a Rube Goldberg contraption 100 feet long out of common items. The dynamics to maintain the motion of the piece included use of fire, water, gravity, and chemistry. Their 30-minute film—The Way Things Go—was released in 1997.