Unfortunately we couldn't include these two Daniel Levi offerings in shots 93 as they were being completed as we were closing the issue, but due to the wonders of the web, here they are, hot off the press, for your delectation.
First up is a spot for Velvet toilet paper through Fallon London that continues to defy expectation after last year's award-winning, arty Soft Factory spot from Epoch's Stacy Wall. Levi's ad revolves around a baby who's the boss of Velvet. Why you might ask? Well, they know more about softness than anyone else.
Shot in Prague at a paper mill art directed to look like a toilet paper factory, the part of the baby was in fact played by an actress 2'8"ft high, with a baby's face superimposed on it, which had the facial expressions of a baby mapped onto it in a massive five months of post production at Glassworks. "Using a real baby would have been too random in terms of the performance. Doing the whole thing in CG would have been too stiff and fake," Levi explained to shots.net. "The decision was driven by the idea that I wanted Baby Boss' performance to feel completely natural with inflections of subtle humor. That would have been impossible to achieve if we had gone completely CG."
The second is a neatly realised piece of toy town magic for Swedish band The Concretes. As we watch the band playing the camera pulls away and we realise that they are tiny figures in a toy landscape, with huge versions of themselves watching on. Through a neat set of visual trickery and devices this then pulls away again and again, revealing a series of miniature landscapes interspersed by seemingly "real" ones.
Levi explains where the idea for the promo came from: "I have always loved model making and am fascinated by scale toys. There is something incredibly enchanting for me about scaled down worlds. I love the intricacy and detail of them. I've been wanting use them in a video for a long time and I thought the warmth and naivety of the track suited this perfectly."
To check out a retrospective of Daniel Levi's work, check out shots 93.
To watch the new spots, click here: Velvet and The Concretes
