animals

When we originally came up with these scripts, we loved the fact that there could be a link from the pay monthly films with the big balloons in the desert but that the balloons would have a fresh look and feel.

This time around, they are smaller and there are thousands of them! Pre-production was particularly interesting. You would be surprised to know how many ways our producer Peter looked into making balloons! In the end, they were PVC and we had 6000 of them made and shipped to the shoot. Visual effects people spent hours blowing up balloons and engineering them to move in ways we wanted them to (and trying to keep them away from kids that wanted to nick them off the set).

Finding the location was a bit of luck. We needed somewhere with high probability of sunshine BUT needed it to look like the UK. Turns out the train stations in Buenos Aires look a lot like Paddington or Brighton station.

Balloons generally put a smile on people's faces and seeing thousands released from a train - representing these rewards being made available to everyone - completely achieves this.

All went well on the shoot. Aside from our cat who was meant to have a cameo roll but ended up not being able to act. And the riot that almost started in the station as we were trying to finish our last shot (the station workers went on strike).

good things should never end (interactive ad)

What we wanted to do with this is drive a deeper engagement and expanded knowledge of Orange's 'unlimited' proposition by provoking a discourse online, so that people can collectively find and highlight where Orange have hidden a number of 'good things' and then go back to the TV and find them.

The way it works is like this: if you see the ad on TV, there'll be a press red icon in the top right asking if you'd like a free SIM. On pressing red, you'll be shown a number that you can text to get a SIM sent straight to your house, but a voiceover will then say 'a free SIM is a good thing, but we think good things should never end - keep watching and see'. You'll then be taken to a film that literally never ends, showcasing all of Orange's customer benefits:



Where it becomes really interesting is when you start noticing all the good things we've hidden in the film, from tickets to the BAFTAs to a free 12-month, unlimited phone contract.

Some of these hidden good things can be discovered via interactive TV whilst others (like the unlimited contract) can only be worked out by finding the answers seeded online. (Here's a clue - when you're inside the bit that goes through an orange room, look at your remote - what two buttons could you press to make orange? Hmm...).

The ad will run for a month across terrestrial TV, Sky interactive, Freeview and online.

In case you wonder, the whole ad has been created using stop-motion animation - a first for interactive TV. Here's how we made it:

good things should never end

people are good together

It all looks so easy - we see our man standing in a park all alone and then, from out of nowhere, he's joined by all of his friends and family. The truth is, it took weeks of rehearsals and hour upon hour of tricky choreography to make it seem so effortless and that was all before the dog got involved. See the finished ads here for yourself or click on any of the other small films to see just how it was all done...















We shot the commercial in a park on the outskirts of Buenos Aires in January 2007. In this clip, we see that holes were dug to make people disappear.







Because the commercial plays out in 'real time', timing in every movement was crucial.







Here we see how people were hiding, using the camera's perspective to be able to appear 'out of nowhere'.











Running away when the camera isn't watching. Sometimes it's as simple as that.