Ikea 'Fright'

HELPING IKEA TO MOVE THE FURNITURE
Hasan and Partners have come up with another amusing idea for IKEA's ongoing campaign to get people to dump their dreary old furniture in exchange for some of the company's product. Fright is a 60-second spot that takes the horror movie as its starting point. Fright was directed by Simon and Jon for Blink, and the producers came to Framestore for digital effects that would convincingly help the tongue-in-cheek suspense along.

 

To the sound of a stabbing string orchestra (a la 'Psycho), we see a series of scenes of escalating drama, as old furniture comes to life and attempts to sabotage IKEA. Initially the old furniture simply tries to stop IKEA commercials from being seen - a kitchen chair unplugs the TV, an old bedside table swallows a portable TV, and armchair upends and repeatedly strikes the living-room TV.

 

But these efforts are not enough, and the furniture takes to the streets (perhaps in homage to some of the zombie films of George Romero), making their ungainly way towards a giant IKEA store, where they form themselves into a gigantic pile in a last ditch attempt to block the entrance.

 

The spot was filmed in the studio and on location in Romania. The effects were achieved in a relatively low-tech manner, either in camera or - for all of the articulated furniture - using two or three on-set puppeteers and rubber jointed props. So the majority of the work that came to Framestore Inferno wizards Stephane Allender and William Bartlett was that of rig-removal, with some additional 3D animation created within the Inferno. The giant IKEA building was actually a warehouse in Bucharest, so Allender had to apply all the necessary set-dressing to make it look right, including the glass panelling in the final shot, which was laid over a plain wall surface.

 

For the Telecine, Colourist Steffan Perry's brief from Simon and Jon was for something with an eerie, Hitchcockian edge to it, steering well clear of jollity. Using 'The Birds' as key reference material, Perry applied that film's tonal range and saturation levels - very desaturated greens and a magenta wash creeping in - to the Ikea footage. No highlights were blown, and no lowlights crushed, keeping a filmic print look.