Synopsis
A pitch and two adverts for Eon Energy
Production Details
Client
Eon Energy
Nexus Productions (Luke Youngman)
Production Company
Music
N/A
Talent
Peter Dodds/Mike Shorten (animation)
Denise Dean (clean up and much more)
I'd forgotten about this one almost because the eventual job ended up, two adverts in, being a very different thing as to what I'd intended it to be but I rediscovered the initial pitch film the other day (above) and forgot how charming it was.
The brief from DLKW (at the time, I think it's DLKWLowe now) began with the foundation in the press campaign which were all beautifully charming and simple charcoal line drawings of normal everyday people against a really empty page by Bob Wilson (not the footballer) an illustrator from the 70s. At the top of the brief was a call to ... 'do something that had never been done before!' and my reaction was to embrace the space and create tiny beautiful vignettes of moments that sit between the advert breaks - essentially almost no action, just tiny nuances.
We won the pitch but to some caveat questions from the Agency that 'we could of course do more dialogue couldn't we...?'
So the script came in and unsurprisingly it was wall to wall dialogue.
Hmph.
The film at the top of the page is the pitch film I made.
Illustrations - Bob Wilson. Animation - Stuart Doig
Voices taken from The Archers
The finished advert (below) isn't without charm but my initial idea fell between two stools and I wasn't entirely happy with it.
Eon Energy - Smart Meter
Commercial
Without doubt, though, the best thing that came from that was meeting and working with Peter Dodd, Denise Dean and Mike Shorten.
Peter is one of the most talented drawn animators I've ever seen (he spoiled us on the first day by showing me a whole batch of linetests of sequences from the beautiful Illusionist by the madman Sylain Chomet). Him and Denise (who was doing clean up but is a great illustrator and animator in real life) and Mike (now a great illustrator/concept artist) knew each other from that time
It was years before the TSB ads which Peter incidentally did recently (2013/2014) and which are sublime but they share a sensibility I think.
The worst part was that at the end of that advert I was a bit frustrated that the we had gone so far away from the initial stillness but we had a chat at the Agency and they said, yes, they understand, let's see where the next things are taken.
Cut to a month or so later and we get a new script in and it's two comedy mice in a mouse hole written by a couple of creatives who I don't think had done animation before (certainly not drawn animation) and who unfortunately enjoyed the whole process as much as I did.
Really nothing to do with the first idea at all.
I think this is the only thing I've got left of it, a later stage animatic/animation WIP.
Deep down I'm pretty sure this is the job that began to make me realise I didn't want to make adverts anymore.