NOW WITH HDTV, YOU CAN SEE ALL SORTS OF THINGS. TAKE PATRICK, FOR EXAMPLE.

Robin Stam, currently Senior Copywriter at Duval Guillaume in Belgium (he also has a very well-writen blog) and Marton Jedlicska, Miami Ad School student and his intern partner (who we heard all about in a previous post) produced a wonderful spot for Telenet Digital TV. The spot is a perfect example of what can happen when a team decides to look at a problem from another point of view. Everyone is pushing their HD content these days. Robin and Marton found a new way to look at HD: how does it change things for the lowly extra?

Here's Robin on the spot from his blog. (His very well-written blog!):

"Funny how the entire year you can struggle, almost nothing is made for your portfolio and right at the very end of the year you make something that makes the entire year a good one again. Welcome to advertising!"

"I almost didn't get the briefing for this TV commercial. But persistence and a big amount of bluff poker ('We can do this. We can really do this!') paid off. And above you can see the result: the latest TV commercial for Telenet digital TV."

"As soon as the idea was sold, Marton and I wanted to do things differently. We insisted that there shouldn't be an actor playing the role of the extra. It's a commercial about extras, so why not let a real extra talk about his work? This was very hard to get through internally because there's a big risk involved with hiring somebody who's not an actor. Every second on the set costs money and trying to make a non-professional act could be a costly experiment. But a shooting for Dexia earlier this year proved that sometimes the best actors are the ones who play themselves."

"In the end we convinced everybody to give it a go. We did write a script, but we tried out the script with two people: one actor and one actual extra. Although the actor was very good, nothing could beat the excellent performance of Patrick playing himself. And it was pretty clear already that he was going to be the one that appears on television."

"The guy who says hello to Patrick is a famous Belgian actor called Roel Vanderstukke."