Amsterdam based agency, Etcetera turned to PostPanic director Mischa Rozema to take on the challenge of its hugely ambitious Human Network script. Central to the integrated global campaign for TNT, is a stunning 50 second television spot highlighting the delivery giant’s far-reaching network of dedicated couriers. With an accompanying TVC cutdown of 30 seconds, personalised video for TNT’s existing clientbase and several key print visuals, PostPanic took on producing the main bulk of the integrated campaign followed by localising to 32 countries.
The hugely ambitious script appealed to director Rozema’s taste for taking on the epic, “There was just no way to turn a script like that down,” exults Rozema. “Even though it had ‘IMPOSSIBLE’ written all over it; the complexity, the size, the craziness. Maybe that’s what really pulled me in to this. I just loved stepping into the unknown and finding out how we could make this work.”
Peter van Leeuwen, Creative Director, Etcetera/DDB, comments: “Most of B2B delivery campaigns are all about scattered images of quick deals, planes, handshakes, ships, cars and traffic, bringing a parcel from A to B. We wanted to show the real people behind this business and the ‘orange’ TNT fuel running through their veins in an epic and memorable way.”
For Rozema, the biggest challenge was how to avoid the VFX becoming the focus of the TVC. “PostPanic is set up differently than most production companies because we have our own in-house post production team which works instinctively with the directors. The temptation would have been to apply all that specialised knowledge and make this into a VFX fest but actually we threw out a lot of VFX when we started the project. We stepped into this trying to create as much ‘in camera’ as we could.”
This meant the production company had to set up major shoots in five locations across Europe ranging from live action drone-powered aerial mountain road scenes to complicated motion-capture acrobatic performances. Rozema expounds, “We decided to really push what could be achieved in camera by actually creating a full size human truck on the set. It worked by having a huge, truck-sized, metal rig that could be pulled by an actual truck. We then filled it with an incredible Czech stunt team (famous for big Hollywood blockbusters) that had been rehearsing for weeks and gave the whole project a realistic approach. To be honest in the end, we used more VFX in the backgrounds (creating a non-existing airport, alpine road-tunnels and cities) than on the actual vehicles where you’d expect them.”
Head of Post and Creative Partner at PostPanic, Ivor Goldberg explains further, “Of all the challenges on this project (which were numerous… great to tackle, but numerous) two were clear winners. First was creating CG humans to go along side real humans in the same shot. Everyone is an expert and a critic on what a human should look like. There is nowhere to hide. Secondly it was always the intention to shoot as much as possible in camera (mostly because of the problems of the first challenge). Logistically this became undo-able. In the end we had to shoot not only multiple takes but also multiple takes in multiple locations and stitch these all together to create one good image that we could then embellish with CG. Typically there could be up to 10 elements shot at 3 or 4 different locations.”
Executive Producer, Annejes van Liempd, adds, “Our choice of using real people for this rather than CG humans dictated the nature of the shoot making it an extremely technical one both in pre-production and during actual filming. We had so many variables to work with which had to work together and fit perfectly for multiple passes on most of the shots. This resulted in agonisingly time-consuming days on almost two weeks away filming but the stunt team kept us all laughing. We really enjoyed working with the whole Czech crew (via Savage) – they were amazing.”
Once filming was completed, Amsterdam returned to being the centre of activity with post production getting underway back at PostPanic. The post team at PostPanic is unusual by industry standards as it is a completely in-house resource working exclusively for directors on the PostPanic roster – there is no external post-production work ever taken on. Since its establishment 17 years ago, the team has evolved to work organically with the directors, involved at each stage of production and with each CG artist encouraged to add their own distinctive artistic signature to their work. This is clearly reflected in the quality of the work generated by them.
Ivor Goldberg beams, “I take enormous pride in this team here at PostPanic. They are true all-round artists. In an industry where pipelines and workflows can be so rigid and constricting I love that they, as individuals, can not only undertake such a wide variety of disciplines from matte painting to animating and compositing but still get genuine pleasure from the creative and technical process. It is this which I feel is quite rare in the industry and really allows us to produce such quality in such short turnarounds without people running out the door in terror never to be seen again.”
For PostPanic therefore, satisfaction lies in having achievied the impossible. Jules Tervoort, Executive Producer and Managing Director ends, “It was instantly clear to us, that both Etcetera and its client TNT were pursuing something unique here. Because of the concept, scale and size of the project, this was a highly ambitious production from the get-go. Apart from the creative challenges; the whole production – from job-awarded to delivery – was no longer than three months. With the large amount of shooting locations, people involved, various conditions, and VFX, this would only have been possible if all parties shared the same vision. Luckily they did and I’m glad PostPanic was part of this unique commercial.”
