SONY | GRAVITY CAT | 2017
Wait, how did they even film this? / Sony Interactive Entertainment "GRAVITY CAT"
A cat walks on walls, runs across the ceiling, and two sisters fall into the sky along with their entire apartment. For four straight minutes, I just kept asking myself, "Is this really not CGI?"
The problem
GRAVITY DAZE 2 is an action game where you freely control gravity, and in the story, the cat is the hero's partner, playing a role tied to that gravity-bending power. The challenge was how to capture that floating, weightless feeling on camera.
The insight
Cat videos are already huge online. The bet was that if you did one for real, live-action and all, people would naturally start asking "how did they shoot this?" The story centers on a college student stuck on her thesis, and tucked inside it is the game's own message: break out of the box the world puts you in.
The idea
They built a massive rig that could rotate the entire apartment set, and shot it almost entirely practically, with barely any CG. The sisters and the cat get tossed around the room by gravity, racing through every corner, until they finally tumble out the window into the sky. The director was Sho Yanagisawa, with visual effects by Omnibus Japan. The two sisters were played by Nogizaka46 members Marika Ito and Shizuku Takada. They even made an original theme song, "MEWTON," for the piece, and the full four-minute cut was released exclusively online.
What happened
The campaign won seven Lions at Cannes Lions, including a Gold Lion, and also picked up awards at The One Show, D&AD, the New York Festivals, the Clio Awards, and AD STARS. Adweek ran a feature on it, and the video passed 3 million views.
Afterthought
The question "how did they film this?" basically is the ad's whole power. They probably could have pulled it off with CG, but doing it for real gives it a punch that CG just can't match. Everyone involved went all in, and this is what came out of it.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2017
