Brand New School Produces Short Film Series for Volkswagen

SThe brief films—each one is a scant 15-seconds long—is part of a unique marketing campaign for the car conceived by ad agency Arnold Worldwide. Volkswagen plans to post the films on its website.

Each film in the series offers a quirky “metaphorical” representation of one of the 120 new features of the 2006 Passat. One shows an Indian man standing next to an elephant. The man claps his hands and the beast drops a log it had been holding with its trunk. If viewers are puzzled by this display, clarity arrives in the form of a graphic reading, “pressable badge trunk release.”

“Each film is like a little puzzle,” explains Brand New School creative director Jens Gehlhaar. “You’re not quite sure what it means until the graphic appears to explain it all.”

The films span an astonishing array of conceptual approaches and filmmaking techniques. Some films are straight live action, others involve CG, stop motion or cel animation. Still others feature a combination of some or all of the above. The humor ranges from pure slapstick to oblique absurdist visions that may leave viewers scratching their heads. One shows four men in black tights and head masks performing a choreographed routine of squats and presses with heavy dumbbells. They represent the Passat’s 200-horsepower, 2-liter, 4-cycle turbo-charged engine.

Arnold Worldwide chose Brand New School for the project because of its experience in producing short, funny films for MTV. The studio originated the “Quickies” series featured on MTV and MTV2 and has produced 55 of the short films since 2003, as well as an additional 88 “Music Video Quickies” for MTV’s 10 Spot Drop. “Since the MTV project broke, a lot of people have come to us for short films,” explains Gehlhaar. “Arnold and VW liked the approach we took—most of the films had the quality of an art or film school project produced over a weekend.”

Gehlhaar and his team came up with more than 80 concepts for the Passat features. Arnold creatives chipped in some of their own ideas and eventually pared the list to an initial round of 25 films. “We tried to incorporate as many different techniques, looks and feels as possible,” said Gehlhaar. “Five or six were animated, the rest were shot on film or video. And we did the whole production in-house.”

In addition to posting them on the web, Volkswagen plans to include the shorts on a promotional DVD for the car that will be distributed with national magazines. There is even a possibility that the films will screen at next year’s Sundance Film Festival, where Volkswagen is a sponsor.

Although Gehlhaar noted that the budget for the project was tight, Brand New School enjoyed a degree of creative freedom lacking in most traditional advertising production. “They just let us go…and that was fun,” he said. “It’s nice to have unlimited creative freedom.”

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