How Smith & Foulkes took Telstra travelling

The creative force behind award-winning work such as Honda Grrr, The Observer Abba to Zappa and the BBC's The Fearless are Here, Riff Raff directing duo Smith & Foulkes, aka Adam Smith and Alan Foulkes, have created some of advertising's most visually striking work.

This week, after collaborating with Black Kite Studios, they've once again added to their extensive ouevre with a commercial for Australian telecommunications company Telstra. A stylish, beautifully realised film, the spot - called Duet - follows a laidback young man named Mick and his shape-shifting 'buddies' as they traverse stunning vistas and incredible landscapes, all to the whistled tune of Islands in the Stream.

Below, Smith and Foulkes, along with Black Kite's Co-Founder and EP Julie Evans, VFX Supervisor Guillaume Weiss, and Head of CG Dan Moore, tell us how they brought Mick and his buddy into the world and what challenges they faced to get them there.

Above: The finished Telstra spot, Duet.

When you saw the script, did you immediately have an idea of how to approach it?

AS: It’s the sort of script that you used to see back in the day that you almost don’t see anymore, an experiential kind of story. It’s not overselling anything, it’s about experiencing the world around you, so it’s really exciting to get to write something like that. They had quite a strong story already, but it was all about going to different places, and we just had to sort of stitch it all together.

It’s the sort of script that you you almost don’t see anymore.

AF: The concept of the main character and his friend changing in different surroundings was already there.

AS: Yes, so we had a steer. I mean, there’s only so many different environments on earth that you can go to, particularly with a slight Australian kind of vibe, but they never wanted it to be Ayre’s Rock and the Great Barrier Reef. It’s not an ad for Australian tourism, it’s very much about getting out there and just experiencing the world with a sort of Australian perspective.

Above [clockwise from top left]: Adam Smith, Alan Foulkes, Julie Evans, Dan Moore and Guillaume Weiss.

What references or inspirations did you use for the film?

GW: We started with National Geographic-style references.

AS: That was a thing we wanted to try, and was one of the reasons we got together with [Black Kite], because we wanted it to have that absolute beauty of National Geographic worlds, and these guys are the masters at that. We had this idea of a quite charming, naïve character within that world, he’s quite simple in some ways, but in a world in which he’s experienced.

We wanted it to have that absolute beauty of National Geographic worlds.

GW: We crafted each unique environment, from concept to final, aiming at representing the wide variety of Australian landscapes. Starting the process as early as pitch stage, it was a process of collaboration and constant refinement.

How did Mick come about?

AF: We worked on him on the pitch with [Dan and Guillaume]. We designed him and [Black Kite] built him 3D. We also did a very rough walk cycle, just to get that feeling that he’s slightly laidback. 

GW: It was also about the level of detail and realism in some of the landscapes, and making that work with the character and the personality of the character. It’s good for us [to have that] at an early stage.

AS: [Doing this work early] is great if you actually win the job because then you’ve got a character. When we did the pitch, they just loved the character. He pretty much didn’t change at all from the pitch. We were in a really good position going into production because we had all of that stuff good to go.

Above: Mick and his buddy, the stars of Telstra's show. 

Did it take long to finalise Mick's look and feel?

AF: There's a guy called Chris Martin, not that one, he’s an illustrator, and Chris always brings an initial sort of... we call it naïve charm. He probably gets really annoyed with us for saying that.

AS: But that’s why we got him involved, because we already had this idea in our head that he would be this simple, slightly bendy character. We loved the idea that you wouldn’t be able to see his eyes. So we went to Chris with that in mind and said, “Can you do your version of that?”.

The two things had to sit together - epicness and simplicity.

DM: Having worked on the pitch as well, and having those initial discussions, [Smith & Foulkes] mentioned something about 'epic simplicity', and trying to bind that into those design cues. So, having created Mick, that kind of language spilled out into the world a little bit.

AS: The two things had to sit together - epicness and simplicity - but we just really liked this idea that he was a very simple character and the worlds were incredibly intensely detailed, atmospheric and cinematic. It was just about the marrying of the two.

AF: And trying to get that balance of how much to see of him and how much to see of the world.

Above: The making of Telstra Duet.

How important was the pre-vis you created just after you'd won the the pitch?

AF: Getting the pre-vis right was one of the most critical phases.

AS: The big thing for us as we were doing the pre-vis was that it became clear to us that you were slightly losing [Mick and the buddy's] story. There were moments where we had to stop seeing an amazing world and just go in and tie it on them as they shared a look, to reconnect with them.

AF: Yeah, it was the balance of character and environment.

There were moments where we had to stop seeing an amazing world and just go in and tie it on them as they shared a look, to reconnect with them.

AS: That's right. In the end we had to make Mick's stride slightly longer. There’s push and pull with various things and then, at one point, the track slightly changed. There's a composer creating this track, and they made a change, so then the whistling started before he opened the door [at the beginning] and it was suddenly like, “Well, that all worked in the last version and now it doesn’t". Then you have to slightly trim the timings to make sure you get all that spot on. I mean, the amazing thing about this was getting the time to just nail every single detail, which you don’t always get in animation.

GW: We used the camera angles from the pre-vis as a starting point, and when we started animating the character properly we would tweak the camera and composition to make it work better with the pace. We also leant on photorealistic National Geographic references, as well as referencing illustrated designs produced by Chris Martin. We wanted to create a sense of epic scale with the composition, while retaining a high level of detail and tactile textures. For example, the scale of the forest and trees against the intricacy of the tree trunks textures and rich foliage and canopy.

Above: The additional time the team had meant that the spot is finished to exquisitely high standards. 

How much time did you get to complete the spot?

AS: We had three-and-a-half months. I mean, that’s a good chunk of time to get. Nowadays it's usually more like two months. So, it just meant that we could get everything detailed and absolutely spot on.

What they also gave us was trust. You don’t hear the word much anymore in this game.

AF: But what they also gave us was trust. You don’t hear the word much anymore in this game, but they were massively trusting in us and in [Black Kite] to do it right, and it’s great to have that level of trust. In fact, the only nervousness came from the client slightly at the start, which was just this thing about animation and people thinking it’s sort of small and kiddy and all that sort of stuff. It’s not like they were down on animation, they just wanted to be reassured that this was going to look as cinematic as live action can be. 

Did the extra time mean you could really focus on the detail of the landscapes more than you might otherwise have been able to?

GW: Yes, the environments had to be different enough from each other to tell the story, but also had to fit together visually within the same wider world we were building. We start within the home of the character then his neighbourhood. We then pass through an eerie and intimate forest setting. We wanted to create a sense of scale with the stretched, vertical trunks, also playing with depth layers of foliage and canopy. The cave is a much moodier and darker place where light bounces and atmospheric rays play a big part. 

Above: Mick and his shape-shifting buddy exude laid back charm. 

It sounds like a complicated but very collaborative project.

AS: Well, we kept saying to the [Black Kite] guys the whole time, which I think they initially got quite annoyed with us about, that we wanted to light it like it was a stage set. So, if there’s a sun, we were saying, 'Don’t cheat it, put an actual sun miles away from the character and use that light within the set'. So, there was a lot of kind of actual physically lit vibes in each world, which is tricky, and which is why you normally do use cheats, and we did use cheats.

You could see straight away that was the right track.

GW: Our animation team worked closely with the directors to develop the main character’s walk cycle and overall movements. It was all about crafting the character’s laid back and personable charm, as well as his reactions to the wonders around him. The whistling duet and complicity between Mick and the buddies required a lot of finessing in animation. It was all about the character’s back and forth and playful exchange while hitting the song’s timings and camera cues. We also created an additional layer of subtle stretching and breathing animation to each environment, whether it is the street stretching into the distance, tree trunks stretching upwards, or the hills rolling into position on the end scene.

Can you tell us about the track; was Islands in the Stream always the choice?

AS: There were some others, but you could tell from our initial briefing that that's the one they really wanted. We worked with a couple of composers, even at the pitch stage, to do a couple of versions, which they absolutely loved. You could see straight away that was the right track. That track’s got little moments in it, little pauses, where [Mick and the buddies] want to stop and look at something. And there are little back and forth moments going on in the track, which you want to hit visually as well.