São Paulo – The story begins when a clumsy man tries to take a picture of the Roman Coliseum, in Italy, using a regular digital camera. Unable to do it, he tries to frame the tourist spot by taking steps back. As he moves away, he gets into several situations, such as knocking off a restaurant table and nearly being run over by motorcycles. He ends up crossing the entire city and suddenly finds himself in front of the Egyptian pyramids, realizing he had walked so much that he wound up in Cairo.
There, in the capital of Egypt, he discovers the Sony Cyber-shot camera and its “panoramic function,” when a girl asks him to take a picture of her with some friends in front of the pyramids, and explains how easy the task is with her new camera. “Exaggeration and humour were crucial to get our point across and show how the Cyber-shot panoramic camera is essential so that you don’t lose your best moments,” says Carlos Paschoal, Sony’s general Marketing manager.
The agency in charge of the campaign was Dentsu Latin America, based in São Paulo, and the film was directed by Rodrigo Pesavento, of the Porto Alegre-based production company Zeppelin Filmes. The director travelled with a team of eight people to Italy and Egypt, where they spent 10 days shooting the commercial. The entire team is from Brazil. “We chose to use light, portable cameras in order to have more freedom, language-wise,” says Pesavento of the production’s technical aspects. “My idea was to invest in the combination between the visual power of the settings and the dramatic possibilities of the main character, which is played by a fun comedian with great corporal expression,” he says.
Pesavento, who had already travelled to Egypt with his family 10 years ago, claims that this time, because he was travelling on business, he had an opportunity to learn more about local habits and uncover other aspects of the country. “When we arrived in Egypt from Rome, the smells, the colours, everything was impressive, another world opened itself up for us,” he claims. ”I only have good things to say about the trip. The East is really worth knowing. We get accustomed to standard trips such as Paris, London, New York, and end up not discovering the amazing history of fantastic countries such as Egypt,” he says.
The executive director of customer services at the Zeppelin production company, Breno Castro, who was at the filming, explains that the Brazilian team had support from a highly professional and competent local production support teams in both Rome and Cairo. “They took care of all of the logistical support, such as transport, food, clearances, local walk-ons, costumes,” he said.
The ad was almost entirely shot using Cyber-shot cameras. In addition to the very digital camera advertised in the film, two more sophisticated Sony cameras were used. “Even with little lighting, the image quality renders the use of certain pieces of equipment unnecessary and requires a smaller team than traditional productions, be it in cinema or advertising. This enabled the whole footage to be shot at the locations themselves, because recreating the original settings in the studio would require too much post-production,” explains Dentsu’s Creation director, Felipe Cama.
According to Sony, its new compact camera is the first in the world to capture and automatically combine, with a single click, a sequence of images in high velocity (up to 100 frames in one single picture) at an angle higher than or equal to 180 degrees, producing panoramic photos.
The ad will be shown on TV and at movie theatres in Brazil. The campaign will also include merchandising actions in TV shows and magazine ads, and promotional actions at leading shopping centres and on the Internet.
Watch the ad on Zeppelin’s site:
http://www.zeppelin.com.br/site/main.php?secao=&idioma=
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
