Stardust Burns Midnight Oil for Radio Shack Holiday Effort

Stardust’s Workshop Burns Midnight

Oil for Radio Shack Holiday Effort

By Anthony Vagnoni

When holiday madness is upon you, what do you reach out for?  How about a fast, creative and efficient solution to all your holiday shopping—or marketing—needs? 

That’s what Sausalito, CA agency Butler Shine Stern + Partners did when they tapped Santa Monica-based design and production company Stardust for a sprightly 8-spot TV campaign for electronics retailer RadioShack.  With time short and a series of scripts that called for a combination of techniques, the agency needed a one-stop creative and production resource.  Stardust handled the entire project, which was designed, animated, edited and finished completely at the studio.

The spots have been running on US broadcast outlets since November, and will wrap up their run on Christmas Eve.  Each uses a different style of quirky live action and animation mixed together to position RadioShack and its roster of gadgets and gizmos as your holiday shopping source.

“When RadioShack unveiled its ‘The Shack’ branding this past summer, part of this repositioning was giving the brand a fresh, new voice and a distinctive creative look,” says Jake Banks, Executive Creative Director and Founder of Stardust. “So when the agency started envisioning The Shack’s 2009 holiday TV campaign, they came to us knowing we could embody the brand’s irreverent and fun-loving vibe and be able to execute the campaign in-house from beginning to end.”

Directed by Brad Tucker, The Shack’s holiday campaign has a little something for everyone. Some spots are fully animated in a stop-motion style inspired by beloved children’s holiday specials, while others feature beautifully shot live-action enhanced with CG.  Yet other spots mash up 2D animation, still photography and live-action for a cheeky, lo-fi aesthetic familiar to a generation reared on viral YouTube content.

For example, in the spot “Paraphone Troopers,” a CG elf rustles an army of Motorola Cliqs out a military plane as they parachute down to the phone city below, cut to the theme song from the 1980s TV series “The A Team”  “Astronaut” shows breakdancing spacemen composited into an urban 2D environment as a Sirius Stratus 6 pumps out the jams.  A chubby everyman’s REM sleep includes dreams of donning a tutu and embracing a Palm Pixi as he dances in “Sugarplum Fairies,” and in “Oh, Snap,” rapper Biz Markie takes digital photos of blinged-out penguins, a DJ’ing squirrel and—bearing his own face—a dancing elf and Christmas tree, all to an instrumental version of his hip-hop hit “You Say You’re Just a Friend.”

Additional spots in the campaign include “Product Tree Farm,” “Tear Into It,” “Lit Up” and “Nutcracker.”

“Our mandate from the agency was to keep a visual rawness to our stories, which was an interesting challenge, since we’re known for giving imagery a designed, stylized look,” says Tucker.  “So we had to constantly check ourselves to make sure we weren’t over-refining shots. This enabled us to inject a lot of fun, innocence and playful energy into the spots, which creatively, was what the campaign is all about.” 

He adds that the big challenge in the campaign was getting the story across of these little vignettes in about 10 seconds each, which is all the time they had, given that the spots are :15s and each has a five-second product shot and logo tag at the end.  “The key was not making them too complicated,” he says.

The studio won the project via an elaborate presentation that included just about everything but the proverbial kitchen sink.  “They had a lot of ideas,” says Executive Producer Paul Abatemarco, “and they wanted eight completely unique spots.”  It was a massive logistical effort on the part of the studio to make sure that everything that was delivered managed to convey the right stylistic vibe. “I think Brad did a great job of capturing a feeling that wasn’t too slick, which is what they were after.”

Tucker and his team oversaw an initial two-and-a-half day live-action shoot to capture the 40 different products featured in the campaign. Half of the third day was spent on a greenscreen shoot with rapper Biz Markie, whom Tucker praises for his good-humor and willingness to allow himself to be dressed in a Christmas tree get-up that required having to wear green tights. The remaining actors were filmed during a fourth day of shooting, including a challenging session involving a custom-built astronaut suit that had a tendency to overheat the actor as he was dancing, precipitating Stardust to bring in an A/C unit that would blow into his suit after each take. Stardust oversaw a final fifth day of shooting for the “Lit Up” spot.

The company’s toolkit included a Sony F35 HD camera, Autodesk Maya for 3D modeling and animation, with keying and rotoscoping done in Autodesk Combustion. Autodesk Flame was used for compositing and color-correction for the spot “Lit Up,” while Adobe After Effects was used to composite the remaining seven spots.

In total, the RadioShack holiday campaign comprised 15 unique spots, with Stardust responsible for producing eight of these and Cleaver handling the remaining seven.  The work is part of a roster of recent assignments that have kept the Stardust folks busy.  Abatemarco points out that the studio recently completed a big Toyota spot for Dentsu that will run extensively in Europe and Asia and an HP spot that was a licensing tie in with the recently released holiday feature film “A Christmas Carol.”

Agency credits on the campaign go to John Butler, Mike Shine, John Reid, J. P. Guiseppi, Mike Tuton, Chris Jacobs, Nick Mathisen, Trey Tyler, Jay Berry, John Verrochi, Lisa Doman, Adrienne Cummins and Kate Morrison.  Additional Stardust credits go to Line Producer Rich Kaylor, Director of Photography Stephen McGehee, Editors Tony Hall and Michael Merkwan, Producer Alyssa Evans and Flame Artist Ryan Yoshimoto.

Published Dec. 21, 2009