Psyop/MassMarket Dissect Absolut

The PR-supplied Q&A with Psyop and sister company MassMarket sheds a little light on “Dissection,” their new advert for Absolut:

What was the creative brief from the agency?
The spot is based upon one of their print campaign ideas which features a cocktail glass exploding out to reveal the liquid contained within it. They wanted to expand on that concept and disassemble a full Absolut Vodka bottle, linger on the vodka within, and then reassemble it by the end of the spot.

Well, that’s exactly what the spot does. And not much else. This feels like a spot that was a spin-off of a print campaign; there’s no narrative, no denouement beyond the reveal of the suspended water centerpiece, which comes in near the spot’s middle. After that, we have no where to go but back where we came from.

MassMarket did a beautiful job on the effects, and the logistics of the shoot were clever:

We knew that all of the glass pieces would be created in CG, but in order to achieve the suspended vodka at the center of the bottle, we wanted to photograph as much as we could of real liquid. To capture this, we used a water balloon, with roughly the same proportions as the main body of the Absolut bottle, and pierced it with a blowdart.

We filmed this at 8000 frames per second (normal film runs at 24 fps). This allowed us to capture the milliseconds between when the balloon peels away from the water and when the water starts collapsing. To watch it in real time is unremarkable, but when the film is slowed down this much, the water maintains the shape of the balloon for several seconds before slowly collapsing on itself. It’s mesmerizing to watch.

It’s a beautifully realized bit of work, but I guess I’m spoiled. I want that visual twist that makes it—well, a Psyop project.

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