Tailor MadeQuirky photo animation is a perfect fit for Levi's

It could have been the photo-animated visuals, the dreamy electronic music or a combination of both. But at a concert several years ago in Los Angeles, Chuck McBride, creative director at TBWA\Chiat\ Day in San Francisco, was mesmerized by Gus-Gus, an Icelandic rock band known for its pioneering multimedia events. Since that performance, McBride had been searching for a way to use Gus-Gus in an advertisement. But no product ever seemed quite right. Then Levi's created Engineered Jeans, featuring twisted side seams and asymmetrical pockets, and a match was made in high-concept heaven."We wanted to demonstrate what the jeans were all about by 'engineering' film," says McBride. "[The film technique] is a wonderful way of displaying movement. The jeans are about movement. [The match] is logical and conceptual at the same time."Invented by lead band members Stefan Arni and Siggi Kinski, the photo-animation technique manipulates film through the editing of still pictures. The end result: an ethereal effect that seems to make all movement pulsate in time, to the music of Gus-Gus.After Levi's gave TBWA\C\D permission to work with Arni and Kinski—who direct through Santa Monica, Calif.-based production company Public Works—the creative team produced four spots: "Kiss," "Ride," "Dance" and "Run." After breaking in August, the TV commercials are currently airing in Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco.All four ads were shot using the photo-animation technique, and each scene was created with hun dreds of still photos. Visually stunning, each commercial depicts only a few seconds of movement—actions that are intentionally brief. (Fred Fouquet of Inside/Out in Santa Monica edited the campaign, and Simon Scott of Method, also in Santa Monica, touched up the special effects.)"We didn't want storylines to stretch over a long period of time," McBride says. "We wanted to take five seconds of time and look at it in a thousand different ways."The unconventional locations of the shoots—Iceland and Tokyo—fit the innovative film techniques but also posed challenges for the two young directors. For instance, in "Kiss," a man (Kinski) and a woman canoodle in front of a stark Icelandic sea. "We were standing on the beach in the middle of winter and we could see rain or snow or hail coming in from the ocean," Arni explains. "We knew how many minutes we had before the rain would arrive, so we tried to finish one shot and haul ass to the tent, where we could shelter people and equipment."Another spot, "Run," features a man and woman sprinting down the bright white corridors of Tokyo's subway system."There were 500,000 people coming home from work, and we were trying to stop them from walking into the frame while we were running with the camera, the actors in front of us," Kinski says. "We almost injured a few innocent Japanese [commuters]." Happily, the shoot was completed without further incident.As might be expected, the directors took all the surprises in stride. "It's fun when you run into things like that because something unexpected comes out of it," Arni says. "There's a positive energy, a freshness you can feel in the film."After all, not everything can be engineered.

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Tailor MadeQuirky photo animation is a perfect fit for Levi's

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