Here’s a fun spot I worked on earlier this year for my great clients at Mirada. It’s a charming commercial fo r lemon-scent Pine Sol, and to provide a brief backstory: the agency had “tested” a wacky concept of small soldiers and ballerinas chanting “powerful clean” and “lemony fresh” as they jumped into a Pine Sol bottle. And it tested well. Like, CRAZY well. So we were asked to put together a pitch on how we might take that concept and flush it out into a fun character animation spot.
The concept is super simple so all the nuance and storytelling is in the directing and camera angles, and really making sure the characters are on target and doing their thing, and so the success here would come down to the execution of the concept. Aside from the storyboards, there were character designers and concept artists working as well, but we were working concurrently so I didn’t have any direct reference for what anything should look like, so I had to charge forward as best I could.
We actually did have an “angle” if you will- the director was very interested in attempting to channel some of the very popular Taylor Swift video for “Bad Blood,” as in, to make sure we charged the lemony fresh ballerinas with a kind of kick-ass spin. Something different! I thought it was a great twist, and you can see in the frames, especially in this one:
Hardcore Freshness Ballerinas and Scrub Soldiers (complete with assault mops), in Pine Sol style, and miniaturized, in a typical household kitchen. I could picture that pretty easy. Here’s the boards:
The client apparently loved the boards, because they were not only awarded the job, but they ended up not needing me to revise any of the frames- which is a pretty awesome deal! Here’s the finished spot:
Not bad! Looks like they did away with the “Bad Blood” references- we are back to cutesy ballerinas, but I think that might be a good move, given the overall timing. Spot looks great. And I’m glad they kept in the “lemon” parachutes- that was my idea!
See you next time.
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