‘Intro’ begins with a rave chick singing the praises of Twix, the chocolate bar with the cookie and caramel centre. To give the spot the desired retro-psychedelic style, Toronto post studio Crush supplied some groovy mouth-watering graphics that enhance each sequence, such as the word ‘creamy’ undulating across the background behind the singer. In subsequent scenes, the word ‘chewy’ encircles a meditating Jim Morrison clone, and the word ‘crunchy’ crawls along the wall while a gravity-defying musician plays his fiddle on his kitchen’s corner ceiling.

The ad is one of two Twix spots Crush did with ad agency Grey Advertising, New York, for client M&M/Mars. Len Peltier out of Hollywood’s Vamp Films directed, with Gary Thomas, Crush’s president, creative director and Henry artist, serving as onset supervisor in Los Angeles. Michelle Czukar of Toronto’s Panic & Bob edited.

Sean Cochrane, graphic designer and Henry artist at Crush, feels the spots reflect a new style in commercials.

‘People are starting to spend more time on their graphics and logo animations, and really using the gear to its fullest potential, which is where we come in,’ he comments.

The spots end with a graphic of the campaign slogan, ‘It’s all in the mix,’ with the word ‘mix’ mirroring the Twix logo. It’s a far cry from the design of commercial end shots in past years.

‘They used to just come up with the classic ‘fade it up to 10 frames,’ but now all our clients are looking for something to add in, and they usually leave us time to experiment and come up with a new way of animating stuff or texturing logos, which is great,’ Cochrane adds.

Thomas believes that although more attention is being paid to graphics in advertising, the end results appear less ostentatious.

‘Graphics are becoming very simple,’ he says. ‘Visually they’re becoming quite clean. Texturally, it’s less about heavily dense layers, and more about clean, effective pieces of graphic design, which is maybe a function of people thinking of their Web presence as well. They want to do something that can carry on over a whole [array] of platforms.’

Business from the south

While Thomas acknowledges the increase in Canadian commercial production since the start of the sag strike in the u.s., he does not believe that has necessarily impacted Crush.

‘We’ve had a fairly steady flow of u.s. work over the whole year,’ he says. ‘Because we tend to do graphics-intensive things, [American agencies] are already looking at us as an option. We get so busy with local stuff, too, that we find ourselves turning away more than we would like.’

Balancing local and u.s. business has meant Crush has had to adapt to two different working methods. u.s. agencies commission the editor to exclusively edit and then themselves deal directly with the purveyors of music, graphics and the other aspects of post. Toronto agencies, on the other hand, tend to have the editor function as an overall post supervisor.

While the Crush team has heard rumblings that u.s. agencies can be overly bossy in dealing with Canadian post houses, it has rarely had that kind of experience.

‘We have found for the most part that the agencies haven’t micro-managed things – they’ve been pretty hands-off,’ Thomas says. ‘They certainly have a sense of the big picture in terms of where they want to go, but they’ve been very willing to let us direct the flow of events.’

Crush’s gear includes two Quantel Henry suites, several Macs running Adobe Illustrator, After Effects and Photoshop design and graphics software, and some 3D capabilities as well.

‘We’ve got Mark Irish, our jack-of-all-trades, who’s been able to add 3D elements,’ Thomas reports. ‘We’ve just done a pool of spots for [life insurance company] Clarica that featured a mixture of Mac stuff, 3D, and Henry finishing.’

Crush is keeping an eye on the latest equipment developments, especially the forthcoming Quantel iQ system previewing this month in New York.

‘It promises to be the first significant step forward in the last four or five years,’ Thomas notes. ‘I think Quantel has always made the best platform for what we do – editing and visual effects – but people choose different software. [Quantel] has been working on trying to open up its platform to be able to let the best piece of software run on their system regardless of who makes it.’

Thomas also sees Quantel looking to find a gateway system into the realm of high definition. As of yet, Crush has not purchased new systems for hd posting.

‘There’s little snips around the edges at it, but at this stage there still hasn’t really been that big an impetus for us to invest in the hd stuff,’ he says.

‘We’ve only had to turn down one job because we couldn’t accommodate that,’ adds Jo-ann Cook, Crush’s managing director and executive producer.

One reason for Crush’s tentativeness on hd is that the industry as a whole has not yet agreed upon which of the variations of the format will become the standard.

‘Any [post houses] doing hd now are certainly finding it hard work, because they’re pioneering a lot of it,’ Thomas says. ‘It may be a little premature to jump into it wholeheartedly. We are, however, looking at tape formats and looking for the transitions, because I think within a year of it moving in earnest you will see the switch take place.’

One concern regarding hd posting is that rendering times for graphics and visual effects will rise dramatically, since the current 601 ntsc format has 720 x 486 lines of resolution, whereas hd has 1,920 x 1,080. However, Quantel is promising realtime hd processing with its coming systems.

‘We’re curious to see how close to reality that actually is,’ Thomas says. ‘The cost involved in making the switch is going to be huge for everybody. Everything from cabling to dubbing is going to be bigger. For a boutique place that isn’t necessarily based on having the most toys, our attitude is ‘We’re going to just keep doing what we do, do the research, but we’re going to wait until things firm up [before committing].’ ‘

Thomas insists Crush is more about its staff than its machines.

‘We’ve tended to use the gear that makes it easiest for us to work as designers. We have never stressed having the latest [equipment]. Not that our gear is old, but we’re not out for one of everything, by any means.’

-www.twix.com