The making of

Sleep Happily Ever After

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A Fairytale

Sears had an amazing Mattress guarantee, a 365 day money back guarantee if you are not satisfied… so what better way to communicate it… re-write The Princess & the Pea.

Our hero would try all types of mattresses, more firm options( vinyl records) and softer ( feather) options in her quest to find the perfect nights sleep.

Finally she found the perfect mattress at SEARS.

Our hero was a quirky personality though, she was unique and had a great sense of humour and even though she was determined to find the perfect mattress, she always kept her sense of humour and optimism.

Sears is the fairytale ending of course.

 

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Rosalie’s Costume

Rosalie came to life in conversations I had with my Costume Designer Katry & Production Designer Nuala.

Her sleepwear would be of a certain kind….she loved a ROMPER….

I wanted to show a passing of time, so I wanted several versions of the Romper so that it felt like Rosalie couldn’t sleep … night after night….

Here are some of the initial design ideas. (Moods only)

#1 “Love A Stripe”

#2 “Prada-esque”

#3 “Tulle”

#4 “Starck / Lace”

 

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Rosalie’s Bedroom

The brief from the agency was to create a magical and whimsical interpretation of Rosalie’s Bedroom.

We decided a Proscenium Arch set on a stage was the perfect architectural setting for her bedroom.

You can see the initial sketches and mood imagery….

This job was incredibly complex and there were hundreds of details in terms of design, colour and light, pattern and texture.

In the following slides you will get some idea of the thought and design process Nuala and I lived through in order to create Rosalie’s world.

We had planned obviously to design and build this set in a studio so that we had total control over it. In order to achieve everything within budget, some elements were miniature, some real size and some were all create with CGI.

This is a frame grab from the final commercial, the arch was built as a miniature by an artist , the bedroom was shot for real as a set, at the right perspective, and the clouds and stars and sky were created as 3D CGI by Fort Worth, Toronto….

Nuala knew a great artist who agreed to collaborate with us on this project.

This is the basic structure of the Proscenium arch.

In the background you can also see the small scale painted version of how we wanted Rosalie’s real sized bedroom to be painted.

The real bedroom was painted exactly like our small scale paintings.

The tree was actually painted by our artist on canvas in his studio, cut out and stuck onto our real walls.

In order to give Rosalie a quirky personality we decided that she loved playing old vinyl records when she couldn’t sleep.

Early on in the design process we needed to know how many mattresses we could have, and how high the walls would need to be.

Nuula made this very basic 3D model so that we could work out al the camera angles and dimensions.

This was extremely helpful when explaining everything to the advertising agency and clients.

My jobs always seem to be about the details.

In the studio we took a lot of time working out how to place the mattresses and what sheets etc would be placed on which mattress so that it all looked beautiful in the final commercial.

We worked out each height stage that would be filmed and each outfit fabric.

If Rosalie had plain fabric Romper then I decided that a more patterned sheet might work best with it.

Every detail in every shot was carefully decided before shooting.

The final bedroom with the final stack of mattresses.

 

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Sears

Rosalie discovers Sears, and her perfect mattress.

The Sears Assistant helps her down from her bedroom window, which acted as our magic portal into the Sears Mattress Showroom.

The final Showroom as it appeared in the commercial

 

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Sleep Happily Ever After

CREDITS

Client

SEARS CANADA

Agency BIMM

CD -  Roehl Sanchez

Creatives - Melanie Cote and Rosalinda Graziano

Agency Producer - Marc Siversky

Production Company - Wilfrid Park Toronto

Executive Producers - Angie Colgoni and Tuula Hopp

Line Producer - Marie Walsh

DOP - Todd M. Duym

Production Designer - Nuala O'Flynn

Post - Rooster Editorial Toronto

Christina Humphries

Fort York

Flame Artist - Mike Bishop

Music/Sound/VO

Grayson Matthews, Toronto

 

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