When British Telecom wanted to get their 'networked-business' message across they turned to Californian VFX company The Syndicate. The 60-second ad took five months to make. We asked how they did it.

border=0 /><BR></div> </p> <p> You’ve seen it on TV by now – a mid-air city-scape with tumbling businesspeople, flying motorbikes, and gymnastics in a doctor’s waiting room. It’s not an obscure art movie, it’s a 60-second advert for British Telecom and a metaphor for the agility of BT-networked businesses. </p> <p> The agency responsible is St Luke’s of London and they used US company The Syndicate (TS) to make it. Joseph Kahn, working through London-based production company Exposure Films, directed the commercial. </p> <p> One component in a £26 million advertising campaign, the spot is part of an enormous BT branding effort, according to Kenny Solomon, executive producer at The Syndicate. The advert opens with a fisherman tossing a fish from his boat. While air-bound, the fish takes flight and sails over the water and hillsides to a cityscape. </p> <p> A businessman somersaults out of a window and catches it before landing in a chair at a mid-air conference. Later, houses are built at warp-speed, and a herd of cows stampedes down a road that’s built before your eyes. </p> <p> The voiceover cites today’s digital network economy, “where transactions are instant, data is stored and information is shared.” The BT spot represents five months’ effort by The Syndicate. “It has almost everything one could possibly throw into a commercial,” says TS’s CG supervisor David Lombardi. “The piece is a ballet that pulls the eye along.” </p> <p> <div class=inlineimage><img src= Print

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