Taking a big swing for McDonald's: agency Moroch gets a DI re-do of an SD spot by Frames for theatricalrelease

Post, August, 2005 by Ken McGorry

DALLAS -- There's more golf being played on movie theater screens this summer than in a Tin Cup/Happy Gilmore double feature. Last month Post explored the Izod approach to promoting golf sportswear with a cinematic spot by HomeNYC. Now we have McDonald's in a new play for the youth market--a :30 by agency Moroch now in theatrical release and posted in HD by Frames (both based here).

Actually the :30 Urban Golf isn't brand new--Frames posted a similar version, produced by Plum Productions of Santa Monica, last winter. But this new version was completely reposted in digital intermediate for cinema display. It even has new content, a new music track and "less product."

That's right, one of the things Frames had to do was replace product mentions and overt product shots with additional "golf" action. The plan, agency producer Gannon Kennedy says, was to target young adults (mostly males) in the 18-to-34 age bracket with a more subtle image piece that ties together youthful fun and the corporate burger. (Urban golf, which uses tennis balls BTW, is organized in cities all over the country and is all over the Internet.)

THE DEMOGRAPHIC

This is McDonald's first foray into movie theaters and the idea is to catch young adults there. "That target demographic is very desirable for quick-service restaurants," says Kennedy. "Look at the stuff on TV and everybody's going after the young adult. But in the age of Tivo, [marketers] are dying because those kids don't watch TV that much. They're a hard target to pin down; they're not at home in front of the TV."

Kennedy feels the traditional model of big-budget network advertising is morphing into something new. "Some of the major advertisers have started looking at cinema a lot more--especially brands that are looking for that demographic: Coca-Cola, Nike, Mountain Dew, Pepsi. One of the things the smart advertisers try to do is make it entertainment. Because, with that demographic, if you chain them to the seat and pound your message at them, it'll turn them off."

Moroch's research pointed to urban golf and their aim, Kennedy says, was to present something entertaining to watch and listen to. "We thought, 'Here's a fun, new trend--playing urban golf in different cities--and then at the end go, Oh, yeah, McDonald's.'"

One bonus was that Moroch (www.moroch.com) already had this ready-made TV spot, Urban Golf that aired last winter. "It fit very well into McDonald's music-based campaign," Kennedy says, "young, hip, urban people doing young, hip, urban things." The difficulty was the :30 was standard def 4:3--ready for prime time but not movie theaters. "We hadn't initially shot it for [theaters] so we had to go back and re-invent the wheel."

THE DI

Here's where Frames and creative editor Brent Herrington saw action. The original Urban Golf was directed by Ericson Core for Plum. This McDonald's campaign featured :30s with :08 to :10 of "food footage" and local retail pitches. For the new approach Moroch had in mind for cinema audiences, Urban Golf's donut hole would be filled with more golf content. But the spot would need a full DI overhaul for showing in theaters. First stop was LA's Company 3, where the selects of original film were retransferred to Sony HDCAM by Mike Pethel.

Back in Dallas at Frames (www.frames-persecond.com), Herrington offlined a new version in Avid's HD Adrenaline that suddenly felt roomier. He added some speed-ramps and jump-cuts, and also incorporated director's cut material that had been originally edited by Plum's Ben Ross.

Frames' Nathan Hurlburt reconformed Herrington's offline in their Smoke HD in 16:9. Hurlburt also had to recreate all the effects, which were originally done in SD. In one shot, a young woman swats an animated tennis ball over a parked car and into a trash can for an urban hole-in-one. At the very end, a tennis ball is shot directly at camera. "We shot that ball here," Herrington says. "We repositioned that into frame and did the composite."

The overall look of the cinematic Urban Golf changed, too. "On this version we had the luxury of darkening things up a bit more," Herrington says. Mike Pethel had darkened the look at Company 3, and later Hurlburt did secondary color correction in the Smoke. Working with Hurlburt, Herrington supervised the spot's final touches.

Frames is set for HD and DI work thanks to its founder, Ken Skaggs. All the HD equipment is complemented by very trustworthy monitors, Herrington says.

While most moviegoers view Urban Golf on film, Frames also provided versions of the spot in different HD formats for different theater chains with digital projectors.

Urban Golf is about sound, too, and the spot got a new, edgier rock track from Juniper Music & Sound Design in Dallas.

Urban Golf was the first of what are now three cinematic spots Moroch has done for McDonald's. "In-theater advertising has become a hot thing in McDonald's world this summer," Kennedy says. "Since then we've done one spot from scratch and we just finished shooting another project that we knew was going into theaters so they framed it and transferred it correctly from the get-go."