All of us have experienced it while sardined together on public transport: the feeling that we're a mere part of the machine, being inexorably ground down by the daily workings of our lives. But how to tap into that rather bleak transcultural truth while creating an uplifting message? That was the challenge faced by director Ram Madhvani in his latest spot for Himani pain relief ointment produced by Equinox Films through Publicis, Mumbai.

"Man-Made Machines" opens on a cityscape as dawn rises and takes us through a typical day in the city. However, in this depiction, the mechanisms of society - buses, clocks, assorted machinery - are built out of ingeniously arranged men. As a bus built of men comes to a halt, one man, part of its "wheels", rolls out and rubs analgesic cream on his sore shoulder, before scooting back under and carrying on as before.

"It's not just true of India, but there's a saying in Hindi that we've become machines," says copywriter Ashish Khazanchi. "[But] how do you pitch that in a way that doesn't become Orwellian?" That was a concern shared by Madhvani in creating the spot's sur, or tone. Indeed, the team spent a month and a half wrestling with the theme, in order to empathetically target the medication's blue collar demographic while conveying a positive, uplifting message.

Luckily, India's karmic tradition, with its onus on stoic acceptance of circumstances, acted as an implicit undercurrent to the spot. To reinforce that, Madhvani and the creative team stressed the matter-of-fact nature of the pains and irritations that are part of everyday urban existence.

"On the highway of life, whether we get an ache or a sprain or a fever or a cold, you pop a pill and carry on," says the director, repped by Great Guns for the US and UK. "You don't make a big deal out of it. So there was a casualness, an informality with which we decided how we would treat this." That informality is captured in the closing shot. A cow, placidly sitting and chewing its cud amongst the city bedlam, serves as a comic foil, juxtaposing the serenity of nature with the absurd rat race of the urban dwellers.

Accompanying the visual narrative is an up-tempo backing track written by part-time Bollywood songwriter Khazanchi, which harks back to traditional folklore and Sufi resoluteness. "It's not a song that exists [traditionally], but it sounds like the big Sufi saints of yore, talking about how the hands of time are going to keep turning," he says. "So it sounds very real, not like a jingle."

While finding the tone for the spot took work, the execution could have proved torturous as Madhvani was adamant that all the "machinery" should be in-camera, with back plates to be shot later acting as backdrops. Madhvani's AD and FX supervisor spent weeks scouting industrial machinery and clock towers to create a blueprint for the corresponding scenes in the spot.

The director worked with an engineer and a team of 200 comprised of modern and traditional Indian malkhand dancers, who specialize in aerial acrobatics using special 40-foot poles. He then spent two months devising and choreographing credible structures that could appear to be entirely made of humans, without showing the supporting architecture. Madhvani was insistent that the "human bus" should actually move, so it proved the most challenging shot in logistical terms.

"Obviously when you've put 200 people on [the bus] the road caves in, because that's a hell of a lot of weight for a normal road to take," he says "[With] each person [at] 80kg, that's eight or 10 tonnes of weight. The grooves of the tires actually sunk into the concrete and the tar." Heavy-duty motors were employed to haul the hefty bus, and careful harnessing ensured that no one fell off. But while the humans performed well, Madhvani recalls that two overworked motors sputtered out.

Wardrobe also proved important in striking a balance: to-the-letter representations (for example, red clothing for a typical Mumbai bus) were deemed too "graphic", with the stylization detracting from the requisite individual humanity of the spot. Conversely, normal clothing would mean the symbol - the "bus" - would be lost, so the team opted for an amalgam of the two.

To create something that would resonate with Indian workers, Madhvani shot typical Mumbai backgrounds for the piece, using the work of acclaimed Indian photographer Raghubir Singh and taking as references his street scenes of everyday India. "There are many kinds [of looks] to Bombay: the Bombay of steel and chrome, and the Bombay of stone, or the British Raj-style buildings," says Madhvani. "And there is a Bombay which is like all cities, a city in flux. That's the Bombay we finally ended up with. It's a disorganized, chaotic Bombay and like all developing cities, it has the mix of the old and new and the chaos of that collision. Eventually that's what we decided we would go with, although in aesthetic terms it's not the most pleasing to the eye." That approach also added to the feel and tone of the film. "I like dirt!" says the director with a laugh. "Also I think there's a tactile quality to that. With steel and chrome, you don't want to touch."

Fittingly, for a spot promoting an analgesic, Madhvani says the shoot was remarkably pain-free. His only real concern was one shared by rush-hour commuters worldwide. "I knew we needed people who were flexible for the bus, and who wouldn't mind when their bodies were touching each other," he says with a smile. "I panicked that rehearsing with normal people there would be sexual harassment cases."

Publicis http://www.publicis.com
Equinox Films http://www.equinoxfilm.net