PORTLAND, OR - Bent Image Lab (www.bentimagelab.com) recently completed work on a :30 spot for Hershey's that might be described as a mixed media extravaganza. The dynamic spot promotes the candy company's Reese's Pieces brand and was produced with the idea of always keeping the round peanut buttery candy locked in the center of the frame.
DDB New York conceived the "Center of Attention" spot, which combines hand drawings, physical props, animation and stop-motion techniques to create a constantly moving world of peanut butter fun.
"We made things out of paper, clay and found objects - not unlike what a 12-year-old might do," explains Bent Image Lab's Chel White, who co-directed the piece with David Daniels. "These included a cityscape made of old computer monitors and radios, a sea made of peanut butter, and characters made out of a toothbrush, a cassette tape, a pencil, and a pink eraser. We relied on a combination of traditional stop-motion, motion-control camera movements, pixilation, collage animation, clay, and computer-generated imagery. Our goal was to make it glide smoothly from one media to another."
Bent's Ray DiCarlo, who is a partner in the studio with White and Daniels, served as executive producer on the project, with Gina Bevilacqua also acting as producer. The studio's Steve Miller cut the commercial, which was color corrected by Jim Barrett of Downstream Digital in Portland. Downstream's Lance Limbocker handled the sound design for the project and composer Mark Mothersbaugh of Mutato Muzika in Los Angeles wrote its original track.