STRESSBALLERS PANDEMIC STOP MOTION COMMERCIAL
“This project wasn’t technically supposed to exist, but are you interested and able to take on a stop motion commercial?”
This piqued my interest. COVID19 was raging around the world, and people were afraid to collect their mail for fear of infection. While I’ve handled large productions before, they’ve been modest stop motion ventures or still photo campaigns. I could turn around a full stop motion campaign of multiple videos in five days with an assistant sourcing supplies or a photographer to hand the technical details while I built out the concept. But this project was born from cancelled flights and closed borders. Somehow it found its way to my inbox.
The good people at Cornett had a loose script and wanted to make magic in a couple weeks. The product? Ironically, a stress relieving supplement, one we all began taking immediately to counter anxiety around the ever-evolving news cycle. The entire world was on slow motion, but the project was scheduled at a normal pace. Further, shipping supplies was delayed to prioritize PPE.
Could we manage with such tight parameters on every side?
Cornett trusted my vision and facilitated smooth meetings to buy me more time to work. Using their script, I created a couple sets of storyboards which outlined colors and general movement. The biggest question was what to use. What could ship here in four days time?
In short, paper seemed like the unlikely hero. I reached way back into my 2014 and 2017 portfolios to a handful of paper projects for inspiration. Without guarantee of a shipping a cricket cutter or hiring an assistant, I would have to draw, trace, and cut the entire commercial by hand. Handmade items are not new to me, but there were a couple hundred intricate, multi-layered pieces I’d built into the storyboards. The whole production took two weeks working 12-15 hour days.
The clouds parted when my second set of storyboards were accepted. We centered the concept around the bottle. Everything floated on a blue background so transitions could be seamless and smooth. The challenge was to pay homage to the product’s signature hero image, a bottle sitting on a tranquil, rippling pond. It felt disjointed, but I decided to bring up a pond from the bottom of the screen. Paper ripples would sell the scene change.
I cut assets for two weeks straight, walked three miles to borrow a light bouncer I left at a friend’s before quarantine, and threw blackout curtains over every window on the bottom floor of my house. I knew how to animate but could only build off of a projection of the final frame and worked backwards from there. I’m amazed so many pieces were aligned. Many thanks to the Cornett team who trusted me from afar and helped me pioneer a new remote process.
STORYBOARDING, AD, PHOTOGRAPHY, LIGHTING, STOP MOTION // DANIELLE EVANS
CD // WALT HILER
AD // JASON MAJEWSKI
DESIGN // DAVE JONES
COPYWRITING // COLEMAN LARKIN
POST-PRODUCTION // JOHN BUCKMAN
MARKETING/ACCOUNTING // LESLIE MILLER
CD // WALT HILER
AD // JASON MAJEWSKI
DESIGN // DAVE JONES
COPYWRITING // COLEMAN LARKIN
POST-PRODUCTION // JOHN BUCKMAN
MARKETING/ACCOUNTING // LESLIE MILLER
