Forming | Philips

Philips teamed up with RSA to create a series of films for the 2010 promotional campaign for Philip's Cinema display televisions.  2009's campaign created a lot of buzz and included the commissioned made-for-web film Carousel.  For this year's campaign, a series of films were commissioned along with an open invitation for filmmakers to submit their own films to be judged and curated by Ridley Scott.  All of the films had to be under 3 minutes and use the same script:

"WHAT IS THAT?
IT'S A UNICORN.
NEVER SEEN ONE UP CLOSE BEFORE
BEAUTIFUL
GET AWAY, GET AWAY
I'M SORRY"

Filmmakers were encouraged to make the film feel as big and as cinematic as possible.  Since there was no budget for the competition entries, I decided to use a zero budget as an advantage and make something that felt big but was obviously made very cheaply.  In this case, spray painted mounting board becomes a miniature city along with cheap clip lights, a $7 dimmer switch and lots of glue.  

Using digital tracking tools, I was able to deploy silhouetted CG characters into the set pieces and create a semblance of a story.  I was very much inspired by the architectural renderings of Hugh Ferriss and sought to achieve something similar with volumes of buildings and dramatic lighting.  

I built the miniature set in my demolished basement and shot as I built moving lights around and testing with different lenses on my SLR camera that also shoots HD video.  Below are some early lighting studies:

Once shooting was complete, I added in the CG animated characters, tracking the shots with PF Track:

Credits

Production: Brian Bowman
Client: Philips
Created by: Brian Bowman