MAN VS. BEAR

Nothing says salmon like a standoff between man and bear...right? Well, it does according to the nature doc-cum-kung fu spot created for John West Salmon from Leo Burnett London, directed by Danny Kleinman of Spectre.

Awarded a Gold Lion at Cannes, as well as trophies from Kinsale, the D&AD's, Clio's and the One Show, John West "Bear" opens with a long shot on a tranquil scene of bears feeding on spawning salmon. A staid voiceover describes the situation in a style reminiscent of a public television nature special. Suddenly, a John West fisherman runs like a mad man from the riverbank and attacks a bear who has just pawed a fresh catch; an exchange that results in the bear landing a well-placed karate kick and receiving one in the, ahem, tender regions.

"It looks convincing until you get to that kung fu bit," says the spot's copywriter/art director Paul Silburn (now at TBWA London), noting that the idea of shooting it like a nature documentary was to initially dupe the viewer. "If you get close up to the bear, you wouldn't have been fooled because it doesn't look that realistic."

The spot was facilitated by the existence of an animatronic bear suit from Jim Henson's Creature Shop. A stunt man from Henson's, who incidentally specializes in playing animals, wore the seven-foot-tall suit and operated the animatronic head. Choreography between the bear and the fisherman was perfected in London to minimize the time spent inside the extremely heavy and hot costume.

Compositing was involved to achieve the final look of the commercial, though no real bears were used. In addition to playing the role of the lead bear, "Dave bear" (the fisherman was also named Dave) stood in for the other feeding grizzlies. "It's all Dave in the bear suit," remarks Silburn.

Silburn believes the success of the spot was just a matter of getting the balance right. "It could have been totally absurd and slapstick. But it starts off realistic and then gently drifts, so you originally think 'That guy must be mad,' and then you realize you've been had."

But the spot tapped a pop culture vein, rumored to by the most forwarded spot on the Internet last year

Leo Burnett> http://www.leoburnett.com

ALIEN RESURRECTION

"From the very beginning they said to me, 'This cannot look like a spot.' They wanted it to look like a trailer for a feature, very cinematic, big and bold, which is of course, music to my ears," says director Rick Schulze of his dealings with DDB, Chicago for this installment of the "Whassup" series.

A big budget look certainly was the order of the day in "Come Home," the Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) epic for Bud that took four months to complete, and involved the animation of space ships, other worlds and upwards of 10,000 aliens. "I don't think [DDB] anticipated something as big as we ended up making it," says Schulze, noting ILM made an offer they couldn't refuse. "We ended up seeing this as an opportunity at ILM; a showcase. We pulled out all the stops."

Indeed. Though "Come Home" opens innocuously enough, it soon vaults over to the realm of spectacular, certainly looking more trailer than commercial, if somewhat reminiscent of Star Wars Episode One. It also won two awards at the AICP, and silvers at both the Clios and Kinsale.

The spot opens with a dog being let out into the woods who is abducted by a looming space ship when he reaches a clearing. Cut to scenes of space travel and a strange new planet and suddenly the dog is standing before a legion of thousands of aliens. Returning to his natural state, the dog's head pops off and fur unsnaps, revealing that our furry friend is one of them. Questioned by the head alien about what was learned on the mission to earth, the alien blurts out "Whassup" and is followed by a chorus of alien tongue wagging.

Character design was key to the spot and much attention was paid to detail. Alien creature designer Carlos Huante and a team of designers came up with 30 alien variations. From that, bits of each design were incorproated to create the final product - a snake-eyed bi-ped with unusally large hands.

"The deal with the spot is that it had to pivot from being pretty scary and alien in the beginning to being the good old guys at the bar yucking it up at the end," says Schluze of the challenges the designers faced.

The alien world was created on a variety of software platforms, including Maya, SoftImage and ILM proprietary packages Cari and Isculpt. One of the greatest challenges was creating auditorium shots with around 10,000 menacing aliens. Schulze, who worked closely with visual effects supervisor Kevin Rafferty, says such large tasks usually crash their computers. However, software developed for Star Wars that allowed for such a complex scene was used.

When asked where the costs checked in for such an elaborate bit of film, Schulze pleads the fifth, stating only that "It wasn't cheap."

ILM> http://www.ilm.com

DDB> http://www.ddbn.com