August 27th, 2007
Telling or selling? Saatchi & Saatchi balances both for Crest with Fluid ease
NEW YORK — The story is pretty simple: a ravishing beauty envisions herself walking down a big city street and all the posters and billboards in view, even a Jumbotron and newsstand magazine covers, morph into her smiling image as she passes. What’s not so simple is telling and selling–the product that provides our heroine’s dazzling smile is Crest’s Vivid White Night, a new toothpaste that works its whitening magic while the user sleeps. What makes it tougher still is revealing that the raven-haired actress is actually dreaming during all this, underscoring the product’s claim of overnight whitening.
“Sleeping is always the toughest thing to act out,” says Joe DeFranco, a producer for Saatchi & Saatchi, who produced both Star Smile and another fantasy-driven :30 for Crest on location in Buenos Aires. But DeFranco and company, working with hot director Sanji Senaka, ultimately got what they wanted, and what the client wanted, for this national campaign.
The challenge was maintaining the delicate balance between storytelling and product-selling. A good commercial must do both, DeFranco says, and often the ratio we see on TV tends to be 20 seconds of telling with :10 of selling However, the introduction of Crest’s new whitening product called for more explanation and consumer information than the norm, so what to do?
“It’s very easy for the editor to deal with how long it takes to whiten your smile. It’s different when your editor just has 12 seconds to tell a story when you really need 24,” says DeFranco of his experience working with Avid editor Bruce Ashley at Fluid, here. “In this case, Bruce was great–it’s tough to build that sequence up in a small amount of time. Bruce was really good at narrowing the story down as quickly as possible and still giving as much time as possible to the benefits of the brand and the product itself.”
DeFranco says a big part of the process was to run the spot by test audiences to make sure they were getting the message–both the story of the young woman’s dream of a dazzling smile and the new product’s benefits. “Most important to the brand is, are you getting the sell? Are you getting the benefits, the points that we’re trying to give you?” DeFranco says.
CUTTING AWAY IN NEW YORK
Fluid’s Ashley edits on both Avid Adrenaline, on a PC, and Avid Xpress Pro on a Mac. “I get my dailies on DVCAM these days and it was transferred in Buenos Aires.” Ashley says. “DVCAM is great, much more compact, great quality, it’s portable, and more cost effective–cheaper stock and decks, and also useful if one is editing ‘on the move.’ I created mock composites in the Avid for the greenscreen shots. The process in this case was as much about editing and selecting shots as it was about special effects. The special effects enhanced the dream notion. Bottom line, the cut still needs to work in its own right.”
Ashley collaborates closely with everyone on the production team, and created a director’s cut for Sanji Senaka, but he says, “The more intimate collaboration tends to be between the producer, art director and copywriter as that is who we spend most of our time with day to day. We had to make a decision as to which scene to drop in order to create the best spot. Joe’s input on this was important as he and the other creatives are privy to the client’s needs and these factors, in addition to the creative and aesthetic factors, influence this type of decision.”
Ashley brainstormed ideas with DeFranco and the agency team to portray the transitions of the greenscreen billboards and posters into the star’s smiling face and he helped design the look of the spot’s (virtual) Jumbotron all of which was ultimately executed at Zoic in LA. The lead Flame artist on the job was Marguerite Cargill.
Back in NYC, Lez Rudge, colorist at Nice Shoes, where Grass Valley DataCine and da Vinci 2K color correction rule, provided color-graded transfers in HD.
BEAUTIFUL DREAMER
With all the images of Star Smile’s beautiful dreamer in need of compositing. Bruce Ashley often ran interference for DeFranco regarding the Flame operations under way at Zoic.
“Bruce is very meticulous and doesn’t let anything slip through the cracks.” DeFranco says. “I have no worries when I’m working with Bruce. He was basically covering my butt–he initiated and handled a lot of work that passed between us and Zoic. Even with the Internet, it’s not that easy. Bruce made sure all our conversions were done correctly, just hanging in there with me–it’s been a long road.”
That road led all the way to Argentina, but the favorable exchange rate and the help of Buenos Aires production services company Altana Films made the trip worth it.
This was DeFranco’s first venture with Fluid (www.fluidny.com) “and I intend to go back to those guys,” he says. “Bruce’s handling of all the tech aspects of things and keeping a clear head and his skill at being able to edit down a story to the shortest time possible was huge for me so we could give more time to the sell. Of course, us creatives never want to have to compromise and he helped us find a way to a balance even though we gave more time to the sell than to the story.”