IKEA.
Times Square 3D Billboard - “Give Everything a Break”.
Give Everything Else a Break. Its a sentiment i think we can all relate to. So IKEA wanted to show their heroine taking a break in the center of the most stimulus in the world: Times Square in Manhattan, New York City.
We’ve all seen the ‘3D Billboard’ concept - where by carefully creating visuals on a giant LED billboard that wraps around the corner of a building, you can create the optical illusion of 3d space: creating visuals that appear to be physically inside the space of the building or that launch out towards the viewers.
The creatives at Ogilvy had the great idea to use this technology to create something that felt like we are looking into our heroines apartment, and world, and see her taking a welcome break - which in turn would be for the viewer a welcome moment of relaxation for the viewers in Times Square subjected to total visual overload.
For me and the talented folks at Mathematic it was a welcome challenge…
Whats really special about this particular approach is that we made it for real. in-camera. We’ve seen a lot of these optical illusions “3D Billboards”, done in CGI where the point is to make the illusion be a visually agressive move that shocks the viewer. Here though, the whole campaign idea for Ikea was to ‘Give Everything a Break’ - for this to be a much needed visual respite from the craziness of Times Square. We knew that to do that, it couldnt be done all in CGI - we had to do it practically, in- camera, optically perfect, and I had never seen that done before while still creating these surprising, frame breaking effects. Technically, this was a real challenge with nowhere to hide, with the final set build being an incredibly complex task, and the camera position and angle being calculated down to millimeters, planning our talents movements when she ‘breaks the 4th wall’ and feels like she is emerging out towards us being planned out exactly to the moment - while still making sure her action felt natural and her internal emotions came through.
Finding ways to make it visually compelling and ‘sell’ the optical illusion in a way that drew in viewers, while still instilling a sense of relaxation was the key. So it wasnt about doing these big, agressive 3D visual effects moments - it was about creating this set that allowed me to work with the actor to create this beautiful, perfect day where she could find her calm and her ‘JOMO’ (Joy Of Missing Out). Solving the technical issues and then forgetting them, and just focussing on our story…
We were all really happy with how this one turned out. Although I did try to push this through as a live feed to a Marina Abramovich style real-time event feeding right to Times Square every 3 minutes… they didnt bite. Fair Play.
(I also figured out a way to reverse the camera to shoot it upside down so it would look like our heroine was walking on the ceiling which may have been too far too…)
Still, it was great seeing both the CEO of Ikea US posting about it and the natural reactions of passerbys in the craziness of Times Square. Great result to see it there, and thats coming from a New Yorker.
Thank you to the amazing teams at IKEA, Ogilvy and Mathematic who made this possible.
