Seen and noted

A bit of background from Ken Buchan, Creative Director Zoo Advertising Canberra, Australia.

The brief to ZOO Advertising from Old Parliament House was basically “A day in the life of a Press Gallery journalist” to show how journalists back then had closer access to politicians than they do now at the new Parliament House. They had a love-hate relationship with politicians because they would use any means possible to report the news, through leaks, scoops and ultimately scandals. They all worked in incredibly close quarters upstairs behind the House of Reps, they stalked the corridors and often listened in on secret discussions through air vents and even in the toilets, nothing was sacred! And of course their deadlines were never ending and hectic.

Along with the brief, Old Parliament House supplied us with archive sounds and photographs from the Old Press Gallery as well as many quotes from key journalists who actually lived it.

We then took a tour of the cramped rooms, corridors and sound booths where the journalists worked to get a feel for what we were going to recreate. The rooms were so small and as most of them smoked at work back then, I could immediately see the smoke hanging in the air and clutter everywhere. Many of our own photographs were taken to assist with faithful animation of the space. Then I chose the soundtrack, because when animating it’s important to have your track upfront as it’s the structure that leads the whole ad along, this track also had a “Tom & Jerry” playful bit within the frantic score and once this was sourced we were away.

I’ve always been amused by the fake backdrops that newsreaders have behind them depicting an important place when in reality they are actually in a cramped studio. The idea of breaking this illusion and revealing the real chaos behind whilst ‘live on air’ was appealing and felt like a good start to the ad.

As I entered the House of Representatives looking down from the gallery above the Speakers chair, it was very exciting because the view reminded me of the key bay within an old fashioned typewriter and this association would help tell the story of how the proceedings of the day were translated onto the printed page. It was just a case of solving how to make this work effectively in animation.

The animators from Eye Candy are brilliant, instinctive and incredibly thorough, they took extensive photographs of objects that are unique to Old Parliament House; such as the red and green lights that signal which house is in session. They painstakingly cut out different members of the Press Gallery from annual classroom style photographs and created bodies for them as well as recreating each and every room. Their interpretation of the script was spot on and the typewriter scenario was actually art directed over a Skype connection at night on one or two occasions. Finally the clandestine antics, ‘glass against the door’ scenario with a narrow escape disguised as a lampshade, was a lot of fun to animate and really sent up the sometimes-comical extent they would go to, to get a story. With the help of Images Online we chose sound effects to accompany the animation and actually used much of the real noises from the archive within this ad.

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