Company 3's Alex Brodie Rocks with Apple's iPod
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SANTA MONICA, CA (Jan. 05, 2004) -- The eye-catching print campaign for Apple’s iPod has been set in motion through a new series of television spots for the portable music player. Conceived by TBWAChiatDay the three 30-second spots extend a concept seen in countless billboard and magazine ads where silhouettes of people dance to music from their iPods. In a spot titled Rock, silhouetted people dance and play air guitar to the Jets’ anthem Are You Going to be My Girl? Other spots feature hip hop and dance tracks. Accompanying graphics deliver the simple message “iPod. Mac or PC” and end with the Apple logo.
Although the print ads have been a huge success and garnered widespread attention and acclaim, that didn’t necessarily mean the concept would work in motion. “The biggest challenge was figuring out how to make silhouettes look good,” said Meyers. “If the dancers crossed their hands in front of their bodies, it wouldn’t look good. At the same time, we were doing three styles of dance and we wanted to capture the essence of each one. The soul of the commercial was in letting dancers do what dancers do.”
Brodie, who has a background in fine art and design and is a graduate of London’s Ravensbourne College of Design, performed a number of tests to determine how best to obtain clean silhouettes. Ultimately, he and Meyers settled on an approach where the dancers would be shot against bluescreen while holding iPods. The wires Brodie would painstaking paint into each frame in post. “They wanted the wires to have a specific look and thickness, so I drew them in frame by frame,” Brodie explained. “That allowed me to give them a smooth movement that would have been impossible to achieve with real wires.”
Brodie also applied color and texture to the iPod units held by each silhouette. “We wanted the iPod to stand out so I pulled color and texture of the face plate from the live action and applied it to the silhouette,” he explained. “That approach didn’t work for the back of the unit, so I painted it white. The iPods therefore have a different treatment depending on which way they are facing in the frame.”
Similarly, Brodie added accents to some of the dancers by applying textures from bits of jewelry or clothing worn by them. “We wanted to restore a studded bracelet worn by one of the guys in the hip hop spot,” he recalled, “so I created a grad that matched the range of tones we were keying into it and to achieve a cylindrical form. It is a very precise look.”
To say that the project involved “quite a lot of effort” is a serious understatement considering that the team produced three versions (:15, :30, :45) of each spot. “It is so simple that it is very powerful,” concluded Meyers. “It was executed in a very trusting and collaborative environment—it was as though we were all in the same arts and crafts class. It was fun.”
Company 3 Santa Monica, is located at 1661 Lincoln Blvd. Ste. 400 Santa Monica, California 90404. For more information, call Stefan Sonnenfeld at (310) 255-6600.
Company 3 New York, is located at 545 Fifth Avenue, 5th floor, New York, New York 10017. For more information, call Elisha Levin at (212) 687-4000.
Commercial Credits
Title: Rock, Hip Hop, Dance
Length: :15, :30, :45
Client: Apple
Agency: TBWAChiatDay, Los Angeles. Lee Clow, worldwide creative director; Duncan Milner and Eric Grunbaum, creative directors; Susan Alinsangan, art director; Tom Kraemer, copywriter; Cheryl Childers, producer; Mai Huynh, assistant producer.
Production Company: @radical.media, Los Angeles. Dave Meyers, director; Gary Waller, director of photography; High Hat, choreographer.
Location: No location shoot.
Stage: Raleigh Studios, Hollywood.
Editing Company: Cosmo Street, Santa Monica, CA. Chris Davis, editor.
Nomad Editing Company, Santa Monica, CA. Glenn Martin, editor; Jim Rodney and Steve Miller.
Music Company: Stimmüng, Los Angeles. Liza Richardson, producer. Licensed the Hey Mama by the Black Eyed Peas; Are You Going to be My Girl? by the Jets.
Agoraphone, New York.
Post Facility: Company 3, Santa Monica, CA. Stefan Sonnenfeld, colorist.
Visual EFX Company: Company 3, Santa Monica, CA. Alex Brodie, Henry artist.
Audio Post House: Play, Santa Monica, CA.
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