Why a travel app resurrected a Victorian animation technique
In this week’s episode, BMB’s chief creative officer Matt Lever and Electric Theatre Collective’s head of CG Dean Robinson explain why they modernized a Victorian animation technique for travel app ad campaign.
Matt Lever and Dean Robinson are this week’s guests
After winning the Freenow account last year, BMB created an ad campaign that featured one of animation's oldest methods – a zoetrope. Through CGI, the creatives mimicked the style of the cylinder and the result was a fast-paced, layered spot that brought the mobility app to life in a unique way.
“We were working on the rebrand project for about six months and one of our creative teams had the idea for a character breaking free from the confines of a repetitive life in an abstract and surreal city,” says Lever.
“They brought in a reference that we all really liked that was a music video Pharrell had done called Cash In, Cash Out.”
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After some Googling, his team realized it was the people at Electric Theatre Collective that was behind the piece of work. BMB has worked with them before and knew it would be a perfect fit.
“It was a remarkable piece of luck because that expertise, crafts and bits of know-how that we would need to bring it to life were already in London.”
They then linked up to see how they could take that animation style and make it their own for the campaign.
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“We started with the storyboard and pitched ideas,” adds Robinson. “We then started working the idea out and what this world would look like. It’s such a complicated structure because you have these layers and each is part of the city.
“We knew what those parts were that we wanted to travel through and where the adventure would go but we had to work out what way they traveled through that area and what was in those worlds.”
To hear the full interview, check out the Anatomy of an Ad podcast on Spotify. You can also listen to last week’s episode with Cadbury and Kantar.