The project came to River Film after a conversation with Sir Stuart Lipton, who wanted to shift how audiences see skyscrapers and chose River Film as the agency to do it.
The public view was that skyscrapers are dreary workplaces: oversized, leaving people feeling anonymous. Many assumed that the people working in one, and their customers, would be swallowed up by the sheer scale of the building.
The film was built around the brand’s tagline, “a building for people.” Two buildings may look alike architecturally, but one can be shaped around how people actually experience it. The goal was to change minds.
Short, digestible clips from several credible voices lend the message weight. Because the building was nearly finished, a fly-through would have been pointless, so the film concentrates entirely on the interior environment.
The result is a groundbreaking film made with a mixed-media approach: 2D hand-drawn animation, green-screen filming, CGI animation and careful sound design, among other techniques.
Next: Manhattan West