When a water main bursts, streets get flooded with water. But what happens when a broadband line bursts? According to London agency St. Luke's, all fantastical havoc breaks loose.

A project with a production budget over £1 million, 20 scheduled shoot days and nearly five months of post at The Mill, London, "Burst Pipe", directed by Garth Jennings of London's Hammer & Tongs, is a veritable explosion of Internet possibilities.

As a crew of workers toil on underground broadband lines, one announces there's a leak. In a spurt of epic proportions, the entire Internet comes bursting out. First a squeaky pig toy falls from the sky. Next a rhino plummets onto a car, a fighter plane careens through a market, mini pigs cruise on motorbikes (courtesy of Bristol's Aardman Animations), a three-headed dragon roams free and two gigantic Mortal Kombat-like characters go at it in London's Victoria Station. An overwhelmed worker finally gets the situation under control by grabbing the combatants by the hands and leading them back to the broadband pipe.

The 90-second "Burst Pipe" serves as the cornerstone to the campaign, which also includes five :30s and a two-minute cinema spot to air in the UK.

Creative director Al Young says the idea for the brand launch was to illustrate the diversity of information available through broadband Internet. "Most people who try to sell broadband sell it as 'fast, fast, fast'. But that doesn't mean anything to people who don't even have the Internet or don't have a problem with its speed," says Young. "We wanted to show the immense possibilities that broadband can bring."

He also says that next to the British government, British Telecom is the largest advertiser in the UK and that "Burst Pipe" was the largest product launch ever on British television, so "the stakes were enormously high".

Director Jennings was selected for the massive job, not because of his CGI or large-production experience, but for his ability to tell several small stories within a larger one, a strength required by the multi-faceted script. "Garth can create fantastical little self-contained units that are utterly believable," says Young. "We saw this in all his promo work and were convinced he was the man for the job."

Completing the multi-location London shoot was only the first step to creating broadband magic. The five-month-long CG process required the skills of six flame operators and 13 3D artists at The Mill.

Considering the animated contents of the broadband pipe are unleashed on a real suburban London neighborhood, it was paramount that the effects looked seamless. Pre-visualization and on-set rigging enabled the 3D team to effectively blend the real and unreal worlds.

For instance, in the scenes where the rhino drops onto a car and the dragon's tail bashes parked cars in its way, rigs and pyrotechnics were used.

"We thought the best way to achieve the look of a 2.5 ton rhino falling on a car was to literally drop something that heavy on it," explains Mill 3D producer Stephen Venning. "We built a roughly shaped rhino out of a block of metal and dropped it from a crane. It smashed the car and left indentations, which we then placed the CG rhino over."