What
if you were caught in time between the world that we know today
and the world that is about to diminish tomorrow? How would you
see the sky, water, wind or love on the last day for human kind?
These are the creative elements that production company 2000strong,
winner of New York Festival's 1999 Grand and Gold Awards, explored
while creating the promotional teaser for the Showtime Original
Mini-Series, On The Beach, an apocalyptic love story set
to premiere on Showtime on May 28, 2000.
On The Beach takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where most of the civilization has been wiped out in a nuclear war. Australia is spared and the people there know they are living on borrowed time until the winds carry the radioactive fallout to their continent. Within this story is a love triangle between a submarine captain (Armand Assante), an adventurous Australian woman (Rachel Ward), and her former beau (Bryan Brown).
The
promo centers on the wind, which carries a message in the form
of a wandering red rag. The message -- Tomorrow isn't
coming; Today must last a lifetime. Edited and compostited
in Softimage D|S, the spot opens on blue sky with dandelion seeds
blowing in the distance. The camera tilts down to reveal
the shoreline. A cross dissolve accentuates singular images
of a wind turbine, and a red rag….blowing through the air, landing
and taking flight ….delivering the message.
"We wanted to create something menacing, but not depressing, while at the same time visually capture the idea of two worlds: the current world that we now live in where time is infinite and the post apocalyptic world where time as humanity knows it is very limited," said Craig Tozzi, CEO/Creative Director for 2000Strong. "The beauty of this spot was that it allowed us to experiment with a number of film processes and treatments in order to achieve our visual goals."
The result is minimal, simple, singular beauty. The spot is shot on 16mm film and on a number of different stocks with different film processes to achieve the visual effect required to communicate the infinite/finite metaphor. Infinite time is portrayed both visually and aurally through beautiful, saturated images and quiet, natural sounds. Finite time is represented through blown out, grainy images with color and contrast ratios that are abnormal and consumed by a loud, driving, metronomic score.
"We
came to Craig Tozzi and 2000strong because of their ability to
provide a fresh, contemporary look to almost any subject,"
said Len Fogge, Executive Vice President, Creative &
Marketing, Showtime Networks Inc. "We assigned them the
task of creating a spot which would give viewers goose-bumps and
that has actually been the universal reaction."
The On The Beach teaser began airing on Showtime the week of March 27th, 2000. The longer promos start the week of April 17th, 2000.
About 2000strong
With offices in Los Angeles and New York, 2000strong is a full
service production and design studio for television broadcast,
advertising, film and Internet industries. 2000strong embraces
an "open model" approach to creative style -- individually tailoring
the creative and technical direction for each project. 2000strong's
vision and knowledge are built on a solid foundation of industry
experience, design sensibility, technical expertise, and recognized
award-winning work. For more information on 2000strong and
examples of previous work, visit their web site at www.2000strong.com.
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