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By Simon Fuller. Film fun. Selling a TV that boasts cinematic visuals? Better make sure the online advertising is nothing short of cinematic itself, then.
That’s what Philips did in getting web-production outfit Stink Digital and digital agency Tribal DDB to work on the interactive website for their Cinema 21:9 TV, at the heart of which is a two-minute, 19 second-film called Carousel, which shows off just what 21:9 vision can do.
“Tribal DDB came to us with a brief, [which] was to target a cinema feel,” says Mark Pytlik, managing director at Stink Digital. And the outfit brought in director Adam Berg. Together they created Carousel, which features an action-packed bank heist gone wrong and makes good use of an extremely long tracking shot.
“For the long tracking shot, epic films like Children of Men and Atonement were the reference point,” explains Pytlik. “But we thought it would be interesting to do the frozen moment as a long tracking shot. We’ve seen [the ‘frozen moment’ technique] used in advertising but usually as a montage. It’s never been used to actually tell a story – it’s really interesting.”
(Carousel also loops around in a 360, ending just where it begins, in case you’ve been wondering about the name.)
If all that isn’t enough for popcorn-loving geeks in the audience, there’s more fun to be had. Viewers can stop the action at any time to move backwards and forwards through the shot, while at multiple points, embedded ‘hotspots’ light up. Click on them and there’s some nifty on-screen commentary by the filmmakers.
“They were there from the start,” says Pytlik of these hotspots. “Part of Tribal DDB’s brief was that it should be an educational site. Which sounds really boring, but the solution was to have bits where you could go behind-the-scenes into the world of filmmakers. [Tribal] decided they could squeeze in the [educational] info in this way. The frozen moment idea made it more compelling – it added an extra layer.”
It’s all in a day’s work for Stink Digital. “[We’re] an interactive company but we’re born out of a film production company,” says Pytlik. “The stuff we like to do is film on the Net, but adding an aspect of production value.”
brand-e.biz:  With values like those in Carousel, we’re looking forward to Stink Digital ’s next production.