Sucked into the

microcosm

Pop – releasing the pressure, hearing the fizz of freedom, anticipating the paradoxical pleasure of trapped CO2 beating inside you – is often associated with relaxation.

So is meditation.

For William Cameron, creative director of animation and special effects at Toronto-based TOPIX Computer Graphics and Animation, the two are shaken together in a 7-UP spot that begins ‘as a surreal theme park ride down a straw,’ and ends in the meditations of a new-age prophet: ‘Life’s complicated. Keep it simple.’

But the 30-second spot is anything but simple. Starting at the lip of a straw, the perspective distorts, and like a subway through its tunnels, the viewer accelerates through the straw and into the microcosmic world of 7-UP in a glass.

Airing nationally this month, the new spot for client Pepsi-Cola bombards the viewer with images – many times only fragments – that challenge the limits of perception, resulting in a tidal wave of visual overload. Add that to a cornucopia of sounds, and it’s a welcome relief (absent in the 15-second teaser) to find the tag line immersed in an ocean of 7-UP, bubbles gently floating to the surface: ‘Clear your mind.’

‘We were trying to set up a world that is complicated, resolved to a world that is still quite complex but uncomplicated,’ says Cameron. Complex but uncomplicated? Sounds like a bad case of zeugma.

Yet, using Wavefront’s Dynamation particle system, the complex but uncomplicated ‘bubble world’ was achieved. Frank Falcone, topix director of 3D animation, created the digital multilayered compositing and integration effects with Discreet Logic’s Flint and Flame.

The straw slide section, which makes one imagine the information superhighway – no less than the fast lane – combined both computer-generated sequences with live-action scenes. Also directed by Cameron, the live action was shot with Frame by Frame over two days, in search of ‘urban imagery.’

Mixed with 3D objects, computer models, and a somewhat grunge-beat soundtrack, the target audience (20-24) is swept into the by-now-familiar postmodern collage of Joycean fragments that lead to nothing, are seemingly meaningless, and die of semantic atrophy.

And doesn’t familiarity breed contempt?

Well, not in this case. It’s a ride into the imagination, after all. One that saturates the brain, and beckons the thought. Can we stop thinking? Will this ride end?

Thankfully it does, and we do.

Plunged into the bubble world, like being swept up by the undertow, swished and swashed in a chaos of misdirection, the hues shift and shape to form a pattern of bubbles. A pattern. At last. Meaning. ‘Life is complicated,’ repeats Cameron, ‘but like 7-UP, it’s also clear and bubbly.’

A follow-up to the ‘Straw Slide’ is the ‘Net Surf’ spot which debuted mid-month. Similar in thought, energy and effect, it features ‘surfing the net’ and a ‘techno-beat.’

topix credits go to producer Lisa Weinrib, assistant producer Charmaine Underwood, animators and designers Susan Armstrong and James Cooper, and cgi animator Keith Huggins.

The live-action sequences were shot by Frame by Frame dop Nigel Dickson. Willie Fahnestock was the executive producer and David D. Murnaghan the producer.

Ad agency J. Walter Thompson, credits go to vp executive creative director Derek Chapman and senior broadcast producer Andy Williamson. Audio was done at Rosnick MacKinnon. Omri Tintpulver