Intro
I couldn’t be more thrilled when this BREEZELINE creative came my way, as it’s truly the kind of project that invigorates me.
I just felt in love immediately with the ideas and the concept you have created. It has the potential to be fantastic. And this is precisely what I want these films to show, while creating a strong visual identity for the brand.
I’m excited to have the chance to collaborate with you to create a fresh, unexpected, playful experience for our audience.
I see a lighthearted and edgy touch running throughout the films.
I’m especially attuned to capturing that intangible thrill of live energy – which relates to high-speed internet.
I see this campaign as the doorway to transport us to our elevated, vibrant and performing Breezeline world, a world that delivers unmatched performance to its clients.
Everything should feel inspired by a colourful imagination, where inventive and unexpected things are possible, where the “quirkiness” of the very best connected experiences via super fast internet, streaming entertainment, live TV and more will be brought about with a highly artistic and innovative style.
The films should entertain and impress with a fresh and spectacular visual approach to show the speeding-video-posting, livestream, hosting, online-gaming and fast and reliable connectivity for your professional services.
Breezeline’s Fiber Internet service helps provides the speed, flexibility, and reliability of fiber data and it is powerful enough to support both your busy home life as well as your business activity. That’s why we’ll develop a Residential and a Business tvc.
There is a lot to discuss here.
Approach
My mind has been racing with so many ideas on how to develop these ads because they are full of visual stimulation. I want to ignite the viewer’s curiosity with a very clear artistic vision!
I want to arouse their senses and create an energized world going in an attractive direction, creating a colourful, playful mood, with movements and transitions that allow us to move effortlessly from one situation to another.
I like layering the images with metaphors and subtext; this is one of the reasons people will enjoy rewatching the commercial.
Let’s dig in and start by framing the process. Our two subjects need to combine many elements to achieve something uplifting and memorable.
My intention is for the “fast fiber internet ” to become another protagonist of the story and to achieve this, I want all the elements that participate in the scene to have the sensation of traveling with its energy.
The camera will move effortlessly through our scenes on stabilized camera rigs, like a Technocrane or steady, giving us height, fluid speed, and boundless range of motion. Cinematic movement from beginning to end, effortless and dynamic.
Dynamic camera movements will evoke a sense of spontaneity, never allowing the viewer to predict what happens next.
This also involves the way the camera shows the characters and moves in the environments. This camera will have a fluid and dynamic personality, moving around the sets like the internet fiber moves between the elements of the scene.
Film Technique
Let’s start framing the process on the RESIDENTIAL ad.
As you can imagine, not having the budget of Tim Burton’s movies, it would be pretty tricky if not impossible to turn a real neighbourhood into our own private studio.
Therefore we have to approach it in a thoughtful and clever way. We intend to build a photorealistic 3D of a suburban neighbourhood where all the houses are painted in pastel colours as it was in “Edward Scissorhands”.
My original approach was to build an extremely detailed miniature model with CGI reinforcement but considering the time restriction this is no longer an option.
Only by creating our own designed candy-coloured residential area we can achieve our handcrafted Breezeline world, with its crisp green lawns and some towering topiaries. Also the vehicles should be painted in corresponding complementary colours.
I personal believe a coloured stock footage wont work at all and will look average and won’t have enough character.
We’d build all of the house interiors sets in a big studio.
Why?
Because it will look exactly like a real house and it will be an excellent tool for us to move the camera comfortably. We want every scene to be magical.
I’ve work many times in interiors re-built in studio, and the difference between real location and studio is impossible to visualize, therefore I’m not worried at all about them looking like sets.
The main difference between good and bad set construction is the production design and the quality of the execution.
The devil is in the details. Subtle and beautiful touches of imperfection make things look real.
We’ll also reproduce a portion of one of the coloured houses’ facade in real scale to allow the camera to fly into the house and into our DAD’s studio: suddenly it feels like we’ve travelled through a portal, into a special world with bold characters.
We want the production design inside of the house to be inspired by a mixture of vintage and some ultra contemporary elements.
The overall style must feel fresh, injecting colour and tone into the piece.
For the BUSINESS subject I am also envisioning the business district opening shot to be CGI, but we would approach the interior shots in a slightly different way.
Rather than working in studio and building the office and the conference room we are planning to work on real location and to redress it based on our needs: bold, visual, colourful, stylized and always anchored in reality.
Finding a cohesive ‘voice’ and stylistic direction it’s incredibly important to me.
That s why I want the two subjects to speak the same language, RESIDENTIAL and BUSINESS should have a visual continuity maintaining the same feel and look.
Set Design
I am very picky with all of this. As you can tell from my work, the art direction gets a lot of my attention. I work closely with you to create the final product, and that starts by generating renders very early in the process. We can discuss those renders and land on something we’re all happy with.
Then, what you see in 3D is what you’ll get on set.
3D RENDER
REAL SET
Styling
Casting
I feel completely safe casting in Spain; Barcelona offers a huge diversity population, consider that almost 30% of the city’s inhabitants are foreign nationals. Of these, one in two come from a non-EU country. The native population is 47.9%, which means that more than half of Barcelona’s inhabitants were not born in the city. Eastern countries do not have this variety (I know all of them including Ukraine). So I really don’t see any problem in casting in Spain.
We’ll be mindful of hitting all the right looks and styles depending on which market we are speaking to, I’ll work closely with you and the client to follow any and all needs in that sense.
Our characters are the gateway to Breezeline’s world and should be full of personality but without being performative.
I love bold, unique looking faces, with it their own peculiarities and intrigue. The type of beauty that makes you want to be yourself more. Each person’s reaction is personal and endearing. You can feel it. Different faces. Eyes. Smiles. Body movements. How they fill the screen. That truth just shines through.
Residential
Open on the attractive and colourful design of the “Welcome to Breezeline” sign.
The camera pushes through one of the letters of the sign and we literally plunge into an overview of an idyllic town.
We fly over charming pastel houses, coloured cars and surprisingly shaped topiaries.
«Welcome to Breezeline. Where everyone lives a happier life… without internet disruptions.»
Open on the attractive and colourful design of the “Welcome to Breezeline” sign.
The camera pushes through one of the letters of the sign and we literally plunge into an overview of an idyllic town.
We fly over charming pastel houses, coloured cars and surprisingly shaped topiaries.
«Welcome to Breezeline. Where everyone lives a happier life… without internet disruptions.»
The camera, without a break, moves closer to a house and enters through one of its windows. Camera rotates around DAD’s home office.
He is effortlessly and happily enjoying on multiple devices at once: checking his fantasy soccer dashboard, watching a soccer game, updating his soccer blog, etc.
I’ve been looking into what could work transitions-wise taking cues from films and see what would fit the project. I am aiming to use a combination of real physical transitions & great postproduction, the one that you don’t see or perceive.
The design of the screens will have a style according to the film, attractive, with colour, fun and most importantly easy to read and directly perceived.
The camera gets closer to one of the screens where we can see something related to soccer.
The camera keeps rising until it hits the ceiling, but it doesn’t stop…
The bedroom is his refuge, a bit messy but it displays his personality and passions, it breaths an uplifting energy.
Camera keeps rolling and moves closer to the kid.
He smiles and puts on his VR headset.
«With lightning-fast speeds up to 1 GIG, nobody misses a beat…»
We track back and start rotating around him at the same time light changes and he starts to levitate in the middle of the room.
While we keep rotating we push into the virtual world, his clothes and VR headset fly away, he becomes a cool shaped cgi kid. He is now holding a basket ball. He makes either a jump shot while falling backward through the air or a slam dunk.
It goes without saying that if we are not keen on basket we can explore other virtual worlds. For instance exploring space in virtual reality is particularly exciting then our hero could be wearing his space suit and floating thru starships, experiencing anti-gravity environments.
Whatever VR world we decide to choose it needs to be a colorful universe with an exciting art style.
«…everything is effortless…»
He lands… Bam. Virtual cloud arises around his feet.
He looks surprised to the camera, we pan around and discover he is looking at his giant MOM’s smiling face inside the a phone screen…
…camera tracks out of the cell phone’s screen to discover a colorful kitchen where, in the middle of the kitchen’s island counter, stands a stunning 3-foot-high themed cake amazingly decorated. Mom is busy in the kitchen, her cell phone is positioned on a small tripod around it a ring light it’s lighting her, and she is filming herself while guiding her students through one of her on line Cake Decorating courses.
«…and nothing gets in the way of you and your dreams.»
She smiles proudly while positioning the last rosettes, or any other icing designs, on her arty cake.
Camera tracks into the cake and climbs up to its top where we discover a hologram of a dress that takes us to the next scene.
With a swish pan we focus on a girl – who is the DAUGHTER- in her charming room featuring brighter colours with a pink accent wall as a cheerful focal point, where she is designing a life-size hologram fashion outfit. We see her busy changing colors and parts of it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the hologram and I think that rather than take it into to something cold in the shades of blue we should integrate it into the story. Something volumetric and rich in color. Something warmer and closer to the youth universe of emojis rather than to the Ironman’s world.
Holding the hologram, the daughter walks into the living room
where the rest of the family is gathered. Son and Dad are eating a slice of the decorated colourful cake while watching a soccer game and Mom admires her daughter’s work.
«Breezeline gives you the power of reliable and fast internet. So you can have exactly what you need, to do what you love… and live happily ever after.»
We exit through the window and fly to the billboard where the sign is.
«WELCOME TO BREEZELINE»
For the 15” cut down instead of entering to the DAD’s working room we enter directly the SON’s bedroom.
Business
Open on the “Welcome to Breezeline” sign. Push through one of the letters of the sign thru an idyllic scenery of pastel coloured office buildings . The camera enters into an office passing through the building window.
«Welcome to Breezeline. Where everyone lives a happier life … without internet disruptions.»
«Where everyone stays on top of their game …»
The camera tracks to next space where a woman is working simultaneously on different devices: clicking on two keyboards at the same time with both hands, scrolling images on the multiple screens around her. She does it at an incredible speed. With another hand she is spinning a ball on her finger.
«… everything runs like clockwork … »
The camera enters the next box where another colleague is busy on his computer reading 3 different doctoral researches at once.
«… and nothing gets in the way of your goals.»
The camera moves ahead and gets to a conference room where a man and a woman are analyzing a big 3D hologram with texture and color of a futuristic building.
«Breezeline is here to bring your business lightning-fast, reliable internet. So you can keep humming along and live happily ever after.»
The Sign
During my brainstorm days I was also thinking about this option:
to use a solid and colored typo for the Breezeline’ sign and, instead entering one of the letters, to dive through the clouds -that surrounds the sign- and re-appear in the idyllic worlds.
From a narrative point of view it works nicely and instead of “entering” we “dive in” through the soft colored cotton cloud texture and overall this would allow us to use the same shot/camera movement in both films, which would help us in post-production.
Digital Content
Music
Just love the music you proposed in the animatic. I really think it’s just perfect, exactly what I would have been thinking about.
Music plays a huge role in the films, setting the right tempo and pace for the action. Audiovisual synchronicity will express personality, energy and confidence to the images.
I strongly believe music is 50% of the film and as a director I’ll design a story that unfolds along with the track.
A few words about VFX
I m always trying to reduce to minimal the post production in my films, shooting most in camera but in these films I need the help of an excellent CGI company (to create the opening scene of both subjects, to produce the holograms and to create the virtual space in the boy sequence) and to ensure that there’s a seamless play between the live-action elements and the optical illusion world.
And I would add an important note: post production is a very important part of the storytelling. This means I will supervise personally all the process.
Outro
I’ve had a great time outlining the scripts, but please see them as a starting place.
I hope you know by now, the art direction and visual style as a whole are both very important to me, and that importance reflects well in my body of work.
I look forward to discussing my ideas in more detail and collaborating further with you as we go forward.
Nicolás Caicoya.