In keeping with Visa’s all-you-need theme, Leo Burnett’s New York Festivals Gold-winning spot ‘Vending Machine’ features a gigantic vending machine filled with all kinds of things you don’t need. . . but really, really want.

Some fancy sports cars, a grand piano, a fireplace with a roaring fire, a few boats and the piece de resistance, E3, a shiny new red motorcycle, occupy the space inside a larger-than-life, brightly lit vending machine parked between the buildings of a busy street.

Agency art director Kelly Zettel and copywriter Susan Elsley coined the monster-machine concept for Visa Gold to stress the big-money spending power of the higher-end card.

‘We were trying to show someone buying something expensive without going the route of travel, we’ve seen that enough,’ says Elsley. ‘We wanted to come up with a way we could show someone buying something they could hold in their hand and do it in a way that left a smile on your face.’

The lucky pedestrian who stumbles upon the vending machine was shot on a street in front of a blue screen by Avion Films director Justin Klarenbeck (then with The Partners’ Film Company) and dop Doug Koch. The expensive toys were shot in-studio, as was the first row of the machine, the door and the key pad, which were constructed on-set.

The remaining levels of the vending machine were digitally painted in sgi and Mac by Axyz matte painter John Fraser using a combination of Photoshop and Matador. Andy Ames put it all together at Panic & Bob.

What makes the spot successful, according to Fraser, is the combination of the performance with the illusion.

‘The illusion is nothing without what leads up to it, it’s just a big vending machine,’ he says. ‘What makes it work is the fact that the story hangs together as an edit to get you there and it has a certain lightheartedness.’

All the emphasis of the spot is on the last shot, the big vending machine reveal, which meant if it wasn’t successful as a support for the action, then the whole commercial died.

‘The challenge was to make it so it all went in flow and didn’t overpower the evolution towards the shot, but at the same time accomplished the task of holding it together,’ says Fraser. ‘That’s the thing about matte shots, they have to have the strength to do their job but they shouldn’t overpower or stand out conspicuously. The fact is, you shouldn’t know it’s a matte shot, except for the fact that vending machines are not that big.’