Weybridge, 5th October 2007 - San Francisco was submerged in bouncing balls, Glasgow was covered in Paint, now Sony has unleashed a multitude of brightly coloured bunnies on New York City, with the launch of an ambitious and colourful ad for its latest range of BRAVIA High Definition LCD TVs.

The TV advert, which uses Play-Doh-like modelling clay to create hundreds of characters for the surreal and colourful storyline, takes animation to a new level by using claymation – the technique used in award winning films such as Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit.

As with all BRAVIA ads, Sony continues to striving towards creating the experience for real. The 200 bunnies used ranged from a tiny 10 centimetres to a whopping 10 meters (30ft), with the majority of them being 1meter high (3.2 ft).

The production brought together the biggest team of animators [40] ever assembled to work on a single scene. This team spent 3 weeks choreographing the Play-Doh models in Foley Square in downtown NYC to create the 100,000 stills required to produce footage for the 60 second ad.

To add to the challenge of creating the commercial, the animators had to work whilst 8 million New Yorkers got on with their lives around them. This included bringing to life a 30ft giant rabbit in the middle of the financial district, creating a 200 sq ft purple Play-Doh wave and making a whale ‘swim’ through the streets of Manhattan.

 

The director, Frank Budgen, commented: “Technically this is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. It’s an incredibly difficult situation to control. One moment you have too many extras, then you don’t have enough. You have New Yorkers wandering through frames and you have no say over it because we’re doing it for real.”

James Kennedy, Sony Europe said of the new BRAVIA ad: “This was a massive undertaking. Having already set the standard high by releasing 250,000 bouncing balls on San Francisco and creating a pyrotechnical paint display in Glasgow, we knew we had to be ambitious with the new ad.

“BRAVIA fans have high expectations from our advertising and have been watching with interest to see what the third in the trilogy would be. This production has been a technical feat, and even with forty animators working together, it took more than four hours to create just four seconds of film. But the results are spectacular.”

Fans will be able to view the ad online at www.colourlikenoother.com before it is released on TV, watch behind the scenes footage shot on location during production of the ad, and immerse themselves in a colourful BRAVIA experience online.

‘Play-Doh’ will be available online at www.colourlikenoother.com from 4th October.

 

Facts about production of the new Sony BRAVIA ad
3 week shoot, Foley Square NYC (located between the Financial District, Little Italy and TriBeCa)
6 x cameras
2.5 tonnes of Play-Doh used on set
189 2ft rabbits
150 1ft cubes
10ft x 20ft purple wave
30ft giant rabbit
40 animators working on the same scene had never been attempted before
40 animators worked for 4 hours to generate 4 seconds of footage
The 60 second advertisement will be constructed of approximately 100,000 stills


About Paint & Balls
‘BALLS’

• Under the search term ‘bouncy balls San Francisco Sony’, Google yields 274,000 results
• Number of visitors to BRAVIA site on Sony.com increased by 50%
• Online advert received 30m hits and 3m users downloaded it
• 3,000 unique blogs posted mentioning ‘Balls’ commercial
  

‘PAINT’

• On day of release download rate on the servers was peaking at over 600mb per second due to requested content
• In the first week of the campaign 1 million visits to bravia-advert.com were recorded
• In general consumers were navigating towards the ad themselves, a significant achievement in an era when the industry is consistently warned that consumers are opting out

Frank Budgen
Frank Budgen started directing commercials full–time in 1991 after leaving Boase Massimi Pollitt advertising agency where he was a copywriter and creative director.

His work was soon to establish him as one of the foremost commercials directors in the UK and within two years he was voted Director of the Year at the inaugural Midsummer Advertising Awards.

In 1997 he became a partner at Gorgeous Enterprises and since Frank has been at Gorgeous the company has won ‘UK Production Company of the Year’ three times.

About BRAVIA
BRAVIA is synonymous with outstanding quality of colour and clarity of detail: a picture so good it enhances the viewing experience, no matter what you like to watch.

BRAVIA digital televisions offer exquisite design in a huge range of models, colours and sizes, from 20” – 70”. You can choose from a number of advanced technologie, including SXRDTM and various unique picture enhancement features such as the renowned BRAVIA ENGINE.

All new BRAVIA televisions are HD ready and some BRAVIA series are even able to display the superior 1080p High Definition picture in amazing 6,2 megapixel detail. BRAVIA televisions have up to three HDMITM connections for enhanced High Definition connectivity. You can connect any HD device to your BRAVIA with just one type of cable (HDMITM) and with no loss of HD picture or sound quality.

BRAVIA is committed to helping prevent climate change and the brand has won considerable acclaim for its energy-saving televisions.

All Sony digital televisions feature a built-in digital terrestrial tuner and some even offer integrated HDTV tuners for the next generation of terrestrial free-to-air broadcasts in stunning High Definition.



About Sony:
Sony manufactures audio, video, communications and information technology products for the global consumer and professional markets. With its music, pictures, game and online businesses, Sony is uniquely positioned to be one of the World´s Leading Consumer Brands. Sony recorded consolidated annual sales of EUR 54.96 billion (yen 7,475 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2006 and it employs approximately 158,500 people worldwide.