ZooZoo

“Hey! You have to see today’s Vodafone ad ; It’s superb da !!!" - that's how my roommate greets me when I return home every night, to catch the last 2 Overs of the second IPL match of the day.

One of biggest hits of IPL 2.0 is definitely ZooZoo - the cute little stick creatures with the egg-heads. Right now about 10-15 commercials are on air and hold on, 20 more are coming up before May 24, till IPL ends.

ZooZoo myths: It's not animation, it's the human touch

It seems that the production team divided the outfit into two separate parts - body and head. The body part of the outfit was stuffed with foam in some places, while the head was attached separately. To make it look bigger than a human head, a harder material called Perspex was used, which in turn was stuffed with foam (with scope for ventilation).

Here's how they decided on the size of ZooZoo's head: a human head would typically reach up to the mouth level of this giant Zoozoo head. So the creators kept the hands and legs thin. Also, the cast comprised mostly of women – and occasionally children coz they fitted well into it. The thin limbs, contrasted with big bellies and a bulbous head, all add to the illusion that these creatures are ‘smaller’ than humans.

Sets were actually created to suit the size of the Zoozoos. Cinematically, ZooZoo's actual size was a trick: the creatures look smaller than they actually are on screen, this was done deliberately to portray a different world of sorts. For this, the speed of shooting was altered,it is originally shot in a high-speed format to make them look the size that they do and also make their movements look funny.

The films were shot by Nirvana Films in Cape Town, South Africa, with the help of a local production house there, called Platypus . Incidentally, the same combination of people also worked on the ‘Happy to Help’ series last year round for Vodafone.

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Pon Paulraj