DALLAS — Already Been Chewed (www.alreadybeenchewed.tv) recently worked directly with Casio, USA to create a new :60 spot that helped the electronics manufacturer relaunch their G-Shock 6900 watch. Casio’s G-Shock was originally released in 1996. The new spot has a ’90s vibe, with an urban, hip-hop quality designed to align with the watch’s target market.
“The ABC team was asked to develop the creative entirely on our own,” explains founder/creative director Barton Damer. “In order to faithfully reproduce the watch, the year 1996 was very important as far as creative was concerned…We knew, creatively, we wanted to incorporate the East Coast vibe, so that meant New York City, with graffiti of that time, inspiring the look of the spot.”
The spot shows the G-Shock traveling around the urban landscape, past barbed-wire fences, through a subway car, down dark alleys, past neon signs, below elevated train tracks and then, once again, down into the subway. The watch easily shakes off water and debris throughout its journey.
For Casio, the spot had to show key features, such as the watch’s water and shock resistance, and its famous light-up LED face.
“As we were developing the concept, we wanted to incorporate these things without turning the spot into a heavy-handed, feature-driven video with text and bullet points,” says Damer. “So, ultimately, we showed off its shock-resistance by crashing the watch through layers within the subway and demonstrated its water resistance by fire spray hoses going off in the subway’s stairwell, covering the watch in water with droplets running across its face.”
To recreate the New York look, the ABC team created a detailed description of what was wanted and painstakingly collected images, sketches and mood boards for each scene. The result is a seamless, action-filled video from start to finish with no camera cuts.
“In order to do this, without zooming the camera and zooming the camera out, we developed transitions where the watch might pass behind a column or a layer of stairs,” Damer explains. “So, for example, in one shot you’re seeing the full watch and then, as it passes behind a column, you see a really tight closeup. Through these interesting transitions, we were able to accomplish the beauty shots we needed to pull off.”
ABC used a combination of Maxon Cinema 4D, SideFX Houdini and Adobe After Effects to complete the animated spot. In addition to Damer, ABC credits included head of production, Aaron Smock; designers Bryan Talkish, Thomas King and Patrick Goski; animators Bryan Talkish, Thomas King, Mark Fancher, Lance Eckert and Aaron Smock; and product modeler Thomas King.