Watt Burt’s milky ways

Where’s a new Watt Burt campaign on the airwaves, a vignette-filled milk pool helmed by director Robert Turner.

Interesting casting (no one looks too pretty) combined with full-bodied (though not too perfect) images make for an easy-watching pool. dop Michael Buckley was behind the warm lighting, Jane Thompson produced, Timothy Turner and Tom Murray executive produced.

The four 30s out of McKim Baker Lovick for the Ontario Milk Marketing Board were produced by Frances Smith under the creative direction of Graham Watt and Jim Burt.

Watching and listening to the spots I was struck by the sense that something seemed a little off-kilter. Although the spots contain action scenes – canoeing, skating and dancing – there is a sense of peace and an unhurried feel to the images that call out for a Ry Cooder kind of track. Instead each spot is accompanied by a perky jingle, not the happiest marriage.

Chris Parkins of Flashcut edited the pool, music was by Marvin Dolgay of Tambre. MM

Morphed to the max

turning the performance morph on its head. That’s certainly no understatement in the case of two snack spots recently given the Certs Minis touch by Toronto’s Calibre Digital Design.

In fact, beyond the face stretching and out-stretching done to the incredulous bloke in the Certs spot, the kids in the Gushers and Sour Gushers 30s have their faces either explode or implode and one young actor ends up with his features, quite literally, rearranged. This is definitely digitization a la Dali.

The idea is that you get a flavor blast with Gushers and an overpowering tartness with Sour Gushers, a taste that makes you screw up your face and pull your lips inward toward the back of your throat. The Calibre treatment of tart shows the kids’ faces being squeezed inward, giving new meaning to the phrase ‘suck face.’ This visual technique is exaggerated to the extreme so that one boy’s whole body is sucked into itself until, smack, it’s wiped off the screen entirely. It’s funny stuff.

Both spots feature wild ‘n’ crazy announcing by Frank Simms – this spot is through Saatchi and Saatchi New York and many of the craft and other personnel are from south of the border – who zings through a simple kids and candy script with youuunnngg intensity of phrasing and emphatic cadence.

Calibre producer Cindy Cosenzo says the shop is not afraid of overdoing the distinctive performance morph technique with these spots since Certs Minis did not air in the u.s. and Gushers/Sour Gushers will only go on u.s. stations, although they have run on border stations.

Calibre’s Neil Williamson directed the animation and the performance morphs. He also offered technical supervision to animators Lisa Carr-Harris and Andrew Grant. Kim Thompson and Simon Cheung used sgi and pc software to ‘track each live-action scene and then animate each facial reaction.’

hkm out of Los Angeles provided live-action director Danny Boyle. On the Toronto side, Derek Van Lint and Associates’ Terry Collier shot pack inserts. Music and sound effects on the spot were done at New York’s Jam Music.

Agency art director Chris Mckee worked with writer Steve Centeno and producer Greg Hall. Fred Massin was creative director. ST