For Saatchi & Saatchis "Unleash the Power of the Sun" campaign for Sunny Delight, Charlex produced two 15-second spots integrating 3D animation with filmed action by director Michael Schrom. The fast-moving 15-second spots, called "Choker" and "Escape Artist," get right to the point, showing a chained beverage breaking loose from its bonds, and a straight-jacketed bottle escaping from its constraints. The spots, aimed at a "tween" audience, began airing nationally on December 3. "For these spots we needed to create a photorealistic choke chain perfectly rotoscoped to a filmed bottle and photorealistic ice that appears to be skidding," said Alex Weil, Charlexs executive creative director. "This was a great project for our 3D department because we could show how filmic we could make 3D computer graphics animation look, integrated within the live-action." The agency turned to Charlex and Schrom. "We wanted to show the real product, make it look beautiful, and have the concept be lively and believable -- not like a cartoon," said Doug Pippin, Saatchi & Saatchi's creative director and copywriter for the spots. "Tweens have high standards for visual believability and our hope was that the kids in this age group would be intrigued and impressed by something that looks real, a little wacky and also difficult to achieve, which this was." Working with agency creatives, Weil and Schrom devised a way to animate the basic movements of the "bottled-up" solar-energized beverage container, building a rig for each character and even a realistic miniature canvas straightjacket for the "Escape Artist" spot. Schrom acted as puppeteer to manipulate the objects, while directing what happened as the film was rolling. To try out the movements and perfect the realism of the animation, a video test piece was done for each spot beforehand. Following the studio shoot, the choke chain and the animation of ice shattering were created completely in 3D, with the live body movements of the straight-jacketed creature in the bottle, escaping solar rays and final animated product logo done in 2D on a Flame system.
