production values - the coke angel tv ad "ang sarap dito" spot

i think this coke ad is one of the most polished production i have seen on philippine tv. thailand has become one of the top destination for production work for ads in asia and it shows very well in this ad. the camera work and specially the cinematography i thought were very much thailand. (who is DOP? australian too? or thai?)

of special note is the audio, the jingle in particular. it's very well done. the jingle production had it exactly where it needs to be.

first of all, who knows how an adult angel should sound like and in song? we know how angels look like (well at least we think we do), we have seen a lot of pictures of angels done by humans, so we know what to expect. but singing adult angels? we have heard God speak in movies (low voice, reverb, slow, male, a fat male, and old) but not angels. we have an idea of cherubs singing but not an adult female angel. i thought the singing voice in the ad and more importantly the effects applied to it to make it sound like an angel singing was just right. it does sound heavenly.

i keep saying "just right" because this kind of production you can over do or under perform. that singing voice of an angel or heavenly singing in the jingle can sound like the chipmunks or worse a computer robot. the angel and the face just went extremely well together. i think a lot of the appeal of this ad comes from that - it's believability. what we see and hear in that ad, matches our expectations of angels and heaven.

i think over-all this ad has excellent production values, except for one item - the wings of the angel.


i don't think this ad got the wings of the angel right. i also do not think it was easy at all. my bet is that of all the items in the ad, a lot of pre-production meeting time was spent discussing the wings of the angel. there are two types of wings here - the real one like the props on the left and the CG wings. i bet a lot of grief and time were spent on these. i also won't be surprised if a lot of samples of the prop wings have been developed and discarded.

but having said that, i don't think they got it right.

here is where the difficulty is - no human has actually seen the wings of a real angel. we can only use drawings and paintings of angels with wings as references.

this will sound silly, but for me i thought the wings looked obviously fake in the ad. and i think i know why - the wing renditions in that ad, both prop and CG were wings for a cherub, not for a full grown angel. the feathers they used there were underdeveloped, too short and too small. it looks like the adult angel grew tall physically and big but the wings remained retarded, fit for a cherub.

also part of the problem is that the CG rendition of the wings were inconsistent, they did not look the same in all sequences. it looked like not one CG artist rendered all the wings in the ad but several artists did, thus the inconsistency in style and concept. they tried to hide the inconsistencies by blurring them but they still showed.

the wings didn't look majestic at all. to me the biggest disappointment was in that scene where the angel gets up and fully spreads her wings to prepare to fly to earth. they should have spent a lot of time and effort to make that a truly magnificent shot but not enough was done. all we saw was the wings fully spread but it wasn't awesome.

i'm sure the ad agency and director used a lot of references for the wings. but for me, i would have used the paintings of the masters and those we see in religious stampitas on how best to render the wings of an angel.

and, i'm very serious about this, i would have used the victorria's secret (yup the lingerie company) annual fashion show of their lingerie line where they started this trend of attaching wings to their models while in the skimpiest bras and panties. specially during the first three fashion shows using wings, those were the best wings i have seen on VS models. the wings they have in that fashion are exactly how they are drawn in paintings - shape and texture included. i swear, i was looking at the wings when i watch those fashion shows!





blogs on this coke ad:

http://creepygerry.blogspot.com/

http://www.cokeangel.blogspot.com/

to be continued......