Passers-by Gansevoort Square in New York’s Meatpacking District last month might’ve noticed the half-naked man hiding in the bedroom of an upscale apartment. Then they might’ve spotted the maid hastily tidying up his clothes while her unwitting employers engaged in a marital spat nearby.

The scenario, which played out on a four-sided video cube installation, was a voyeuristic tease into HBO’s latest branding campaign, Imagine, the follow-up to BBDO, New York’s award-winning Voyeur for the cable network from 2007.

The sex farce is one element in a dramatic, multi-part storyline viewable via a microsite and outdoor installations in three US cities. The film, directed by Biscuit Filmworks USA’s Noam Murro, unfolds in non-linear fragments and is full of misdirects and shifting perspectives inspired by the tagline, “It’s more than you imagined. It’s HBO.”

The plot follows a Japanese financier named Yahmamoto who orchestrates his own kidnapping and a bank heist by smuggling cash and diamonds out of the vault in stuffed teddy bears. Characters include Yahmamoto’s co-conspirators, a bomb squad officer and a mime who fakes his own death. How each character connects to the story doesn’t become clear until viewers “unlock” clips on the website HBOImagine.com.

“[Voyeur] was linear – it had a beginning, middle and end,” says David Lubars, chief creative officer of BBDO North America. “With this campaign you can come in anywhere. It’s almost like a game where there’s a bunch of facts and you can go back, you can go forward or you can go sideways.”

Designed by digital agency The Barbarian Group, the site organizes the footage in a constellation that includes the two four-sided short films featured in the video cube. Once a viewer watches a clip, it connects to another until all 41 story elements, amounting to more than 40 minutes of footage, are revealed. Since the primary portal into the campaign is the website, the way the clips would appear online drove the narrative.

“We did prototypes of the web experience and once we realized we were on to something really interesting, the gang at BBDO went back and made more content,” says Benjamin Palmer, CEO and co-founder of The Barbarian Group. “It was pretty cool to see how the user experience prototypes stimulated the story and the storytelling.”

The film shoot took place in and around Los Angeles and Trona, CA and on soundstages. The main story pieces were shot in November 2008. As the web experience evolved, two more shoots were added in January and March 2009.

The challenge for Murro in shooting the cube sequences was ensuring not only that the four cameras were synched perfectly to the actors entrances, but that their performances subtly hinted at ulterior motives, real or implied. For that reason, he spent a lot of time rehearsing and blocking with the cast.

“The words had to make sense and have a quadruple meaning,” he says. “The script had a basic spread to it and we started changing, augmenting it per screen, per panel and trying to find the best narrative that could hold all four.”

As the agency added more ancillary elements to the story, the more confusing it would become for viewers. In addition to performance, subtle shifts in music would aid the agency in misdirecting the audience.

“What you want to try and do with these interstitials is maintain mystery while insinuating the connection and the continuity in the story,” says Randall Poster, a music supervisor with Search Party Music. “You have to make something that is coherent when you don’t know when people are jumping in.”

Six composers worked on the campaign to provide different tones and textures to the mystery plot: David Shire (The Conversation), John Ottman, Scott Hardkiss, Jean-Michel Bernard, Nicholas Wright and Nico Muhly.

By working with these composers, all of whom regularly compose for feature film and television, BBDO aimed for the quality HBO’s audience has come to expect from not only its programming, but now its advertising.

“This stuff has to live up to the product. It has to be as in-depth and interesting to truly convey what HBO is doing,” says Lubars. “If you don’t have HBO, you don’t know what’s going on in popular culture. So the whole idea was to create something that nobody would want to miss either.” Q

www.bbdo.com
www.barbariangroup.com
www.biscuitfilmworks.com   
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