Epica d'Or 2005 (film)

The 2005 Epica d’Or was won by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, London, for the new Guinness commercial "noitulovE" ("Evolution")

"NoitulovE" (or "Evolution" spelt backwards) marks a dramatic return to the traditional Guinness promise that "Good things come to those who wait". In this case, however, the waiting period is some 500 million years!

The 50 sec. commercial tells the story of three friends who have journeyed through time to reach the ultimate reward: a pint of Guinness. The action starts in a pub where three men are enjoying their Guinness. The film then starts to run in reverse as the men devolve into prehistoric figures, mammals and flightless birds. In the final scene, the trio appear as mudskippers sipping from a muddy puddle with evident dissatisfaction.

Georgina Meddows-Smith, Marketing Manager for Guinness, comments: "Over the years, we’ve developed a number of iconic advertising campaigns that Guinness drinkers enjoy and recognise. Bringing back "Good things come to those who wait" has allowed us to reinforce this in our advertising in a compelling way that celebrates Guinness as the ultimate pint."

Shot on location in Iceland, the commercial features the country’s dramatic landscape of steaming mud baths, volcanic terrain and frozen lakes. It employs an ambitious range of production techniques and special effects including CGI, time-lapse filming, prosthetics, live action, stills photography, green screen and stock footage.

The film was directed by Danny Kleinman with post-production through Framestore and Wave.

"NoitulovE" secured the majority of the jury’s votes in a final run-off against the Swedish H&M commercial featuring Karl Lagerfeld to win the 2005 Epica d’Or for films.

This marks the second time a Guinness commercial has won Epica’s top award (Ogilvy’s "Bicycle" won in 1996).

Worth the Wait

by Lewis Blackwell

In a year of outstanding movies, such as King Kong, that celebrated new advances in digital technology, the winner of the 2005 Epica d’Or was a particularly topical victor. Not only did it echo such technological triumphs of the big screen, it also represented a spectacular addition to the tradition of great Guinness commercials. But although it shares the "Good things come to those who wait" punchline with earlier spots like Surfer and Snail Race, noitulovE (Evolution spelt backwards, of course) is more than just a worthy successor: instead of a mere single event that unfolds as the clock ticks, we are given an entire retrospective of life on earth - approximately 500 million years telescoped into 50 seconds.

When it was suggested to the young creative team behind the spot, Ian Heartfield and Matt Doman at London’s Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO agency, that they could develop the "good things come" theme, they decided to take the idea to its ultimate conclusion. Thus Guinness is presented as the final achievement in a progression from primeval times, when things didn’t taste so good, to the present, when the fantastic Guinness taste is available to everyone. Describing it as "a big wow idea" that would put Guinness "back on track", the spot’s director Danny Kleinman embraced the challenge of realising it on film, with the aid of the post-production "geniuses" at Framestore in London, led by Kleinman’s regular collaborator, Will Bartlett.

For Bartlett, the biggest challenge was "combining all the different elements - including still photographs, stock footage, studio and location film - with consistency, so that the final spot didn’t look like eight different ads joined together". With characteristic ingenuity, he applied both well-tried and new techniques to create a spot that takes the viewer on a smooth, if rapid, voyage from a contemporary bar, where three regular guys take their first sip of Guinness, to a primeval swamp where three mudskippers sip from a stagnant puddle. As they whoosh backwards in place and time via the 19th century, Bronze Age, Ice Age and prehistoric era, the trio morph seamlessly into ape-like humans, tree-swinging chimps, flying squirrels, fish, flightless birds and tiny dinosaurs, ending up as that most primitive form of life, the mudskippers - who bear an eerie resemblance to our 21st century drinking mates.

The likeness was intentional: although 70% of the commercial was computer generated, Heartfield and Doman wanted the three characters to retain their distinct identities throughout their transformations from ordinary guys to Stone Age hunters, Neanderthal men, apes and primitive mammals. But, says Heartfield, "We did want to get them out of their clothes as soon as possible," to emphasise the evolutionary theme. Not that the creatives had any intention of contributing to the debate about evolution that was coincidentally raging in some parts of the USA when their commercial came out in Britain: in fact, they believe that beer commercials can no longer take themselves so seriously as in the last decade. So they were amazed to hear that audiences of bootleg copies in the States were shocked by the idea of basing a beer ad on such a controversial issue.

The 30% live-action part of noitulovE presented its own challenges. Having mastered the ape-like gait required by the Neanderthal man sequence, the three actors were filmed in thick furs and heavy prosthetic make-up in a tin-roofed London studio on the city’s hottest day of the year. (Fortunately for them, library footage was available for the shots of apes swinging between trees). The film crew then headed to the frosty shores of Iceland where they waded in - literally - to shoot the "Ice Age" glacier that appears briefly before melting instantaneously. Other geological transformations featured in the creatives’ meticulous storyboard owe their realisation to Bartlett’s inventiveness: rock surfaces carved out of dough, for example, or plants he blow-torched to give the effect of burnt-out vegetation.

Towards the end of the three and a half month project, there was a boost for the rather weary team. The creatives brought in sound professional Pete Raeburn to come up with a replacement for their interim soundtrack. When they heard his version of The Rhythm of Life (originally written for the musical, Sweet Charity) they immediately knew that they had the perfect backing track. As the exhilarating tune ends on a triumphant high, we see one of the endearingly ugly mudskippers - real, live creatures albeit with CG enhanced fins and ears - grunt with distaste as it gulps its brackish water. If only he’d hung on for another 500 million years, he’d have found out that Good Things really do Come to Those Who Wait.

Lewis Blackwell is the creative director of Getty Images, having previously been editor-in-chief of Creative Review for many years. Jan Burney assisted him in the preparation of this article.