Maritime Tel’s `multimedia event’

The Stentor alliance of Canadian telephone companies is working hard to remind customers about the level of service and innovation they get from their phone company. Inspired though these efforts may be by new competition, they are contributing to a hip reinvention of these companies.

Case in point can be found in a new pair of 30s for Maritime Telephone and Telegraph. The tag line in the spots, created by McKim Baker Lovick/BBDO Vancouver, is ‘Not the same old phone company’ and it goes right to the heart of the issue.

Launched down east earlier this month, the spots are, according to director David Storey, ‘a multimedia event.’ On loan from his home production company (Derek Van Lint and Associates), Storey worked with Halifax spot shop Charles Bishop Productions using one video and three film formats and some graphics-by-fax to mix and mesh the image textures.

Storey says the crew shot with 35mm, 16mm, Super 8 film and Hi-8 video. But because he didn’t like the way the video sequences mixed with those on film, the video material was run on monitors and reshot on film from there.

In one sequence, we see a scene from the future: a person using a laptop computer (which is supposedly linked via phone lines to a satellite and thence to the famed infobahn) and planning a sailing trip. Such interaction between these boxes is not yet possible, so graphics were created to allow for a simulation.

Says Storey: ‘We shot some of them on Hi-8 video then ran them fast-forward through a tv monitor to reshoot them on our three film formats. We took the graphics, blew them up then faxed them to ourselves then blew them up again (to get a distressed look), then shot them on Super 8 film.’

Besides being innovative, the spots are also funny. The talent in each begins with the attitude that, whatever the phone company might do tomorrow, it will mean diddly to them. But both main characters are blown away by the possibilities and recant. Combine their sheepish attitudes with the weird effects going on in richly saturated colors around them – like groceries in a bag jumping up and down – and they’re a hoot.

And the quick cuts used to illustrate how Maritime Tel goes above and beyond the call, so to speak, are pithy and effective without being overwhelming. All in all, the spots are shot to produce what Storey calls a ‘cartoony effect.’ The jazzy-fusion sound tracks (by Rosnick MacKinnon’s Ted Rosnick) make great complements.

Barry Peterson takes dop credit, with Charlie Bishop producing for the production house. Richard Unruh of Third Floor Editing took on the cutting challenge. Freda Chan produced for mbl/bbdo. Katie Barni wrote the spots while Greg Rowan art directed and Leslie Gascoigne was account supervisor. Creative direction was by Larry Tolpin and Steve Brook. On-line post went to Command Post and Transfer. ST