Leo Burnett Chicago's John Brockenbrough and Bill Stone developed the creative concept, which involves people being pulled out of reality by larger-than-life action taking place in giant disembodied cubes. After a moment of transcendental but chaotic oneness within the cube, they blink and reappear where they began, only now, a GameCube lies at their feet.

Directed by Believe Media's Erick Ifergan, the campaign features one 60-second hybrid of all of the spots, as well as a raft of 30-second spots promoting varied games. "Sofa" has a normal-looking geek sitting in a slick red room on a couch next to a gorgeous goth girl; when he makes a play, he sees her cubic necklace and freaks out. "Train Station" has a Japanese-looking businessman transfixed by two samurai engaged in a jarring martial arts battle within the cube, while "Recliner" features a bald observer, eyes locked on a basketball player whose ball moves at completely different speeds from his hands. "Lawnmower" has a young man mowing a vast expanse of park lawn before being drawn into a huge water-filled cube only to be pulled by a Jet ski. Other spots include "Office" and "Car."

"The idea is a simple analogy between the cube itself and an imaginary cube that contains the game, the part that makes people dream. We wanted to juxtapose a simple reality with what is within the cube," says Ifergan. "I am not a classical storyline teller, but I tried to structure the spots in a way to give us the possibility of demonstrating this idea and integrating game footage."

Ifergen has directed other flashy game spots, including Playstation's "PS9" through TBWA/Chiat/Day and a spot promoting Nintendo's latest "Zelda" game, both from 2000; "PS9" was shot in Hong Kong and the Nintendo spot in Brazil. GameCube was filmed in Rome on location and Cinecitta Studios, with services from L'Isola. Rome was chosen for cost and because Ifergan and his crew were already in Rome, completing a Eurocoin campaign out of Publicis.

With production designer Johan LeTenoux and DP Darius Khondji, Ifergan created "a mental dimension around things," speaking with poetic or surrealistic visual metaphors. Here, the flow of time and the speed of various actions form the basis for these metaphors.

"Some actions take place very quickly while others seem to take hours to unfold, like if you are in an accident, it is all very real and very slow, but it happens in one second," says Ifergan. "I did this with speed changes, all done in-camera, filming one sequence at 200 FPS and another at 1 FPS - 90 per cent of this was done in-camera."

In the case of "Train Station," where the fighters engaged in acrobotics or in "Recliner," where an animated basketball bounces around the cube free of the player, wire rigs were used and were removed in post. However, effects and post-production, courtesy of Paris' Buf, were integral in creating action that took place within the cube. Buf VFX specialists Christophe Chaverou and Nicolas Dark created a pre-visualization model from game footage, resulting in a camera POV that moved freely within the cube interior, the result of which Chaverou describes as both playful and disorienting. Buf used a similar technique in the music video "Escher" for Texas and it is used for these spots when characters are drawn into the cube."We used our homemade software to create the sequence, while game sequences were sent to us, so we could choose which would fit best at the live green-screen takes, and so that we could create the most interesting interaction between the two. We shot the talent over green screen with a live projection of the game sequence on him," says Chaverou.

"We created the cube in CG with edited game sequences on each face. We then created the camera moves inside the cube to create some 'Anamorphoses' on the live action that was projected inside the cube over the game sequence."

While there were three months of post-production involved, Ifergan says the project allowed him his favorite mode of working.

"I don't like doing these complete special effects jobs, composing everything at the end. I like to mix special effects within camera effects, giving the film more richness through this mixture of the past and the future," he says. "A good example is one scene, where Buf wanted us to shoot the cube without glass and recreate it after. Darius and I wanted to make the cube so we could reflect light and get double or triple images by reflections. You can't do that in post, even if your name is BUF!"

Credits:

Executive Creative Director: Jonathan Hoffman

Creative Director/Copywriter: John Brockenbrough

Art Director: Bill Stone

Agency Executive Producer: Ron Nelken

Agency Producers: Veronica Puc & Vincent Geraghty

Production Company: Believe Media/Serial Dreamer

Producers: Luke Thornton, Liz Silver, Mike Brady, Gerard Cantor, Tim Lynch

DP: Darius Khondji

Editing: Andrea MacArthur, Peep Show, London

VFX & Post: Buf Inc., Paris

Visual Effects Artist: Cristophe Chaverou & Nicolas Dark

Music & Sound Design: Peter Lawler, Water Music, London

Webfiles:

Leo Burnett> http://www.leoburnett.com
Believe Media> http://www.believemedia.com
Buf> http://www.buf.com
L'Isola> http://www.lisola.net
Nintendo> http://www.nintendo.com