Brilliant Yes. Simple No. “Apples” PSA for New York City Harvest Food Rescue Organization

Well let's file this under fu@king brilliant.

This ad created for the City Harvest New York and was shot entirely with an iPhone. Yup, you read that right... an iPhone, and hundereds of hours of CGI and editing.
Whats great about the spot is not in the creative execution, but that it represents the amount of food wasted in New York City every day.

Posted originally back in the fall of 2009, it is a stark visualization of how much food is wasted by showing a subway trian filled with green apples arriving in a station. A young women is filmed by her boyfriend as they await a subway, the train arrives in the station and as the doors open, the waiting passenger get flooded with the apples. in fact, thousands and thousands of apples spill out onto the subway platform. The young woman’s boyfriend captures her surprised reaction at the deluge of unlikely passengers while the subway conductor makes an announcement about how much food is wasted in the city and how many people go hungry after which the camera swings to a pillar, with the CityHarvest logo on it.

The video titled, “Apples” was filmed entirely on an iPhone, in a single shot. It was created by ad agency DraftFCB NYC and was produced and finished by Oscar winning New York film production house The Mill NYC. The iPhone was chosen for its "realistic feel people empathize with", practical playback feature, and of course the overwhelming popularity and creative a "realistic and authentic" fell among cell phone users. The apples within the spot were created entirely using Coumputer Generated Images (CGI).

In order to add the apples correctly, the producers had to create an exact virtual camera move, identical to that of the camera. Tracking was done using three static Canon 5D Mark 2 cameras. The iPhone camera was rigged with multiple LEDs to be able to track its movement. Additionally, a Spheron Camera was used to record 360-degree lighting scans. All this data was used to create a virtual environment, allowing the CGI to be added correctly. The post-processing took three weeks to complete.

The “Apples” ad really does have a man-on-the-street sensibility. It is also a fine example of the influence of user-generated content in advertising thanks to the iPhone and the star quality of Apples.
“Our goal with this year’s campaign is to visualize the numbers behind the hunger problem in New York—both the amount of food that goes to waste and the number of residents that go hungry,” explains Keith Loell, Executive Creative Director, Draftfcb. “We’re hoping that the sight of a few hundred thousand apples pouring out of a subway car will get the attention of potential donors.

How Was it Done:



Credits:
Agency: Draftfcb New York
Chief Creative Officer: Michael Simons
Executive Creative Director: Keith Loell
Senior Copywriter: Greg Wikoff
Senior Art Director: Todd Eisner
Junior Art Director: Brad Muramoto