Director combines stop motion &
Motion Control to create the illusion of rooms that furnish themselves in three
spots out of SBC Advertising.

Living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms and dens fill
themselves with beautiful, stylish furniture as the camera travels by them in a
new campaign directed by STORY’s David Orr for VCF and SBC Advertising. The
three spots make ingenious use of motion control/stop motion as empty rooms
become populated with sofas, beds, tables, dressers and other handsome accoutrements
as happy couples look on. VCF president Jonathan Schottenstein and other staff
point out that the store provides both beauty and value. “Style doesn’t have to
cost a bazillion dollars,” Schottenstein says.

The new spots pick up on an earlier series of ads, also
directed by Orr, aimed at refreshing VCF’s brand and making the retailer more
appealing to younger consumers seeking style and low prices. “The first spots
were very colorful and brought a new energy to VCF’s advertising,” says Orr.
“This time around, we went further, adding even more energy and creating
animation in larger rooms with wider vistas.”

The illusions of the self-assembling rooms were created
through a combination of stop motion and motion control techniques and required
meticulous planning and art direction. “There were a lot of moving parts and
they all had to be tied together in a seamless whole,” says Orr. “We needed to
be very meticulous while shooting, because if we made a single mistake, we’d have
to start over.”

The secret to making it work, the director adds, was to
shoot in reverse. The production team started with fully furnished rooms, then
removed one item at a time. In the finished spots, each sequence plays
backwards. “Each sequence is designed so that the talent interacts with the
very last item that appears,” Orr notes. “We wanted natural reactions so made
sure they weren’t thinking about marks. It worked flawlessly, and kept the
energy up.”

“Orr and the entire STORY crew were epic,” says SBC
Advertising
executive creative director Scott Mylin. Not only did they make $300,000
worth of VCF furniture look amazing, they did it with a little something called
panache. Also, they pulled it off in the middle of a polar vortex that shut
down the entire city of Chicago and made a complex shoot more complex. You’ve
gotta love a director who will look you square in the eyeballs and tell you
that frostbite is ‘not a problem.’ We couldn’t be happier with the
result.”

STORY is
represented on the East Coast by SuperPowers (646) 633-4578; in the Midwest by
Dawn Ratcliffe (312) 491-9194, in the Southeast by Miller + Associates, (954)
563-6004; in the Southwest by Gossip!, (214) 288-2813 and on the West Coast by
Sherry Howell, (213) 999-9879.

For more information, visit http://www.storyco.tv/

Credits

Client: VCF

Agency:  SBC Advertising, Columbus, Ohio.
Neil Widerschein, chief creative officer; Leon Yourkiewicz, associate creative
director; Jessica Rowland, account executive; Scott Mylin, vice
president/executive creative director.

Production:  STORY. David Orr, director; Mark Androw
and Cliff Grant, executive producers; Marsie Wallach, line producer; Mary Langenfeld,
production supervisor; Andrew Turman, director of photography.

Editorial: Optimus.