Inside Out

Background

Inside-Out, a striking short film that animates the words and imagery of a spoken word poem, is advertising for people who distrust advertising. Created by Assembly for Fonterra’s Anchor brand and winner of the 2017 Moving Image Purple Pin, Inside-Out is a brave and impeccably crafted piece of visual communication that knows exactly who it needs to impress.

Inside-Out is the kind of project creators dream of; a brave client with an eye on awards, and an advertising agency happy to allow extensive creative freedom. When Assembly were approached by Colenso BBDO to produce a film for Fonterra and it’s Anchor brand, that would position milk as a drink of choice for a younger, savvier audience, they saw an opportunity to do something completely unexpected.

One powerful insight drove the brief, and informed many of the creative choices. For the first 13 years of our lives we do exactly what our parents tell us. For the next 13, we do the exact opposite. At a time when parental influence is on the decline, the teenage years are when the body needs milk the most - but traditionally, it had been marketed at parents. Milk needed to be reframed.

The solution was to create something more akin to a music video. It needed to feel like a legitimate piece of creative culture, for an audience that will shut off instantly when they know they are being advertised to.

The solution was to create something more akin to a music video. It needed to feel like a legitimate piece of creative culture.

In the film, World Champion Slam Poet Harry Baker performs a poem about the incredible goodness found in milk. It encourages teenagers to reach their potential by giving their body the nutrition it needs, and explains complex science through relaxed and rhyming prose. The script is supported by sound design which explores wordplay and abstract metaphor. Every word was brought to life by combining film footage, 3D and stills with simple black and white typography across one horizontal camera move.

Assembly’s creative process began by establishing parameters. Baker’s initial poem, very close to the final draft, provided a central thread off which to hand ideas and links. From there, finding a sense of the musical rhythms of the piece was integral to establishing a complementary visual rhythm.

The simplicity of a single camera move forced them to be inventive with the connection and transition between images. The decision to limit the colour palette to black with splashes of white was an unexpected choice for the audience, but one that allowed the poem itself to bring the colour.

The moody tone, essential to making it work, was a challenging element to convey during the design process.

Visual choices were made by riffing off individual words and phrases in Baker’s poem, looking for evocative images and conceptual links to hang visual ideas off. The chosen elements were then worked up as key art, then translated into motion.

The intention was to create something that felt more like the introduction to a film than a piece of advertising content. The moody tone, essential to making it work, was a challenging element to convey during the design process. Assembly’s solution was to create a five second sample of near-finished video, so that the client could gauge exactly how the piece would look and feel.

Assembly’s work on Inside-Out is an impressive creative response to a brief with both freedom and limitations. The 2017 Best Awards judges considered it to be the perfect representation of moving image craft applied to design thinking and delivered as a brave piece of visual communication.

Easterbrook Words & Ideas
-Mark Easterbrook
www.easterbrook.co.nz