Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Ever wish you could reverse life? Go back, do things differently.

If so, (and you have diabetes), I just produced a TV spot for you. This week I finished up the production on a TV spot for the Utah Department of Health. They wanted a spot to motivate people with diabetes to go out and get their A1C levels checked. By doing so, they would greatly reduce their risk of major (and irreversible) complications such as blindness and amputation.

The idea is really simple. I wanted to remind these people that they can't go back in time, so they can't procrastinate getting this test done. I did this by simply showing a hospital scene going in reverse with dialogue focusing on the need to get an A1C test done. Simple right? Well, here's the tricky part. The actor had to learn his lines in reverse so that when we flipped the film around everything would be going in reverse but we could still understand him.

Here is the raw footage, or in other words, how it all looked while filming it. Listen to him deliver his lines in reverse, it's pretty remarkable.



Now check out the final version once we reversed the film. It's not entirely perfect, but for some reason I really wanted to do this without any post trickery and/or wizardry. We also added subtitlery.



And now go get your A1C level checked.

12 Comments:

Blogger Danny said...

Nice work! I get my A1c checked every three months. My A1c went from 14.1 (very bad) to 5.6 (very good) but I never knew I had a problem until I got sick. It took a lot of work to get it down too. Might be a good idea for everyone to get it checked during an annual physical.

1:29 PM

 
Blogger annihilate said...

You guys are so awesome. Nicely done!

5:04 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Did the actor recite the words backwards too while shooting? Cool spot and the actor seems hot.

5:54 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Awesome. Filming it this way was definetly the right way to go!

8:28 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great work. Why not dub the words in post?

8:52 AM

 
Blogger Mike Arauz said...

Green Formica Table Tops...

anybody remember the little person in Twin Peaks?

9:55 AM

 
Blogger : STEVE : said...

I don't know. I just wanted to see if we could pull it off, you know? Call it an itch. Also, we only had just shy of 18k for production.

Having said all that, I do think post trickery would have had its benefits to the spot, for sure.

9:57 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Had you done the effect in post, I'd never have seen it.

You've got more YouTube views for the raw footage than the actual spot...both illustrate your concept equally well.

Nicely done.

1:34 PM

 
Blogger Brooks Briggs said...

Bravo! Great concept. And the actor did a fantastic job, given the difficulty of doing this as a single take. I'm sure the blooper reel is both long and entertaining.

9:46 AM

 
Blogger Steve said...

I think I would have liked to see the final first and then got the explanation and raw footage. Not sure what impact that final cut would have had. The weird 'accent' and subtitles would have brought me back to figure out what the hell was this? I think.

Posting the whole thing on youtube probably got way more visibility than the agency originally got. The whole idea is cool, taking the challenge to learn how to say it backwards and actually doing it is neat. But if I were the funder (before the youtube exposure) I might have scratched my head about whether this was what I should be paying for.

So how long did it take for him to learn this? How many takes did you have?

11:33 PM

 
Blogger David Wen said...

What's the advertising scene in Utah like?

1:52 AM

 
Blogger : STEVE : said...

It's totally backwards!

Oh man, I slay me!

8:18 AM

 

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