Case Study: Ad for Krishnamurti Foundation America
Henry Miller
In 1969, American writer and bon viveur Henry Miller (1891-1980) published The Books in My Life, in which he described the literature that formed him as a young man. In one of his essays, Miller sheds light on Indian spiritual philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986), who viewed the world as an immediate projection of ourselves, not to be viewed through the prism of doctrines and dogmas.
Task
To create a television commercial for Krishnamurti Foundation America about the significance of spiritual enlightenment. The advertisement should touch on the subject memory and make use of simplification as an obstruction and motion as an effect.
Target audience
The young and carefree demographic which is to be found in bohemian communities in states such as California, Colorado and Arizona. They like to read, but they have somewhat short attention spans due to ceaseless use of social media and other *stuff*.
Concept
The idea was to create a contrast between the fast-paced, burdened state of mind versus the quiet mind and show how existential simplification can be beneficial to everyday life.
The client demanded views. We went looking for examples on succesful pop culture products from which we could draw inspiration.
We decided to follow a camp, colorful style in the vein of the title sequences from AMC series Better Call Saul and retro arcade game DX-Ball and mingle it with the didactic voice-over of experimental indie game The Stanley Parable and the energetic background music from Trainspotting.
We also needed music. Someone came up with the idea to combine techno and music by psychedelic rock band Om to illustrate the contrast between the two states of mind which are depicted in the advertisement. The idea was to go from something completely boisterous to something meditative – to illustrate Miller's thoughts on how to find peace in this rambunctious world by letting go of you ego.
Sensory experiences
No traditional drugs were involved in the making of this film. Instead, we went on a social media rampage and fed our brains with an endless stream of visual input all while eating jelly beans and listening to hardcore techno. Stock photos, the pinnacle of commercialism, came to mind. We wanted some stock priests, as Krishnamurti was not exactly fond of organized religion.
So this became the starting point of our little journey. We had watered the seed, and now it started sprouting. Fleeting ideas slowly turned into visualization, soon they had to be realized.
On the second day, we meditated, drank Yogi Tea and listened to Indian ragas to get in a spiritual mood. The quote on the tea bag tag read "A relaxed mind is a creative mind". We took notes on the rhythm of casual life and found an excerpt in Henry Miller's book that we wanted to use in the video.
Process
We wanted this to be a simple process without too many detours, both because time was short and because we were obligated to end up with an uncomplicated product with a simple message.
Although, if you want to end up with something really simple, you have to work long nights on eliminating all but the truly essential elements, the same way your clear out mental distractions by meditating. Which is basically the whole subject of the video.
Inspirational pig
We took a top-down approach to this matter and decided to be very mindful about which elements we would pick out for our production. This is what we ended up with:
1. A text excerpt from Henry Miller's book
2. Two stock photos
3. A photo of Krishnamurti
4. Two music tracks
5. Logo of Krishnamurti Foundation America
6. Endless means to make things move in Adobe After Effects
To make the process even simpler, we decided to run the speak through Google Translate.
This is the result.
