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The March of the Emperor
BETC Euro RSCG
Created for French pay-for-view television channel Canal+ in 2006 by BETC Euro RSCG in Paris, this commercial forms part of a series of ads that aims to emphasize the channel’s cinematic credentials. The spot portrays a situation familiar to everyone: the confusion that reigns when a story is lost in translation. The scene opens on two friends in a café, discussing a movie that one has seen on Canal+ the night before. The film is La Marche de l’Empereur/The March of the Emperor (the French title for March of the Penguins), a nature documentary that tells of the annual journey of the emperor penguins of Antarctica. Not knowing the film though, the girl imagines it is a film about Napoleon.
01-03 Photographs from the shoot for the March of the Emperor ad, which featured a large number of actors dressed as Napoleon. The crew experienced widely varying weather conditions in Iceland, which hampered filming.
As her friend’s description continues, telling tales of hundreds of emperors marching for days, sliding on their bellies and being attacked by seals, she envisions the scenes with multiple versions of the French leader. Her shock and confusion reaches a climax as her friend tells of the penguins’ mating behaviour, before the ad’s tagline then appears, stating ‘Movies are made to be watched. Canal+ The Cinema Channel’.
‘The brief was that if you don’t have Canal+, you don’t have culture, you are nothing,’ says Stéphane Xiberras, president and executive creative director at BETC. ‘So when you have a discussion with your friends, if you don’t have culture, you’re dumb. But if you have Canal+, you’re so brilliant you can talk about the latest films.’ Xiberras knew from the start that for the ad to work, it needed to be centred on a real film, so that the audience watching would recognize what was going on as it unfolded, and thus be in on the joke. Choosing the right film proved problematic – it had to be something that would appeal to a French audience (so therefore not an American film), yet also be relevant internationally, so the ad could have a life outside France on the internet. The March of the Emperor was a French-made documentary that had recently been released in France and been a huge success, so the agency took a bet on it also being popular overseas.
The ad was shot in Iceland by Australian directing collective The Glue Society. ‘The script that came in from BETC was more or less as per the finished ad,’ says Glue Society director Gary Freedman. ‘It was immediately likeable – just a very funny scenario. I did a treatment that was based around the idea of uncertainty. She is uncertain of the film that she imagines and the Napoleons in the film are uncertain of what they are doing. They don’t quite know why they’re doing the things they do. It’s as if they are responding to the changes in the narrative right at that moment – they behave as if on “automatic”, as if they have lost their own free will. But they have a perspective on what they are doing – they have doubts. I wanted to render them vulnerable, like pawns in a big game. We know that whatever she imagines from the description has to happen in this film – but the Napoleons are also aware of this! They are resigned to their fate, so at the end of the ad, when the narrative says that “they were all having sex together for hours”, they only need to give each other a bashful look and it says it all.’
‘I like the element of chance when you do things for real — you end up with something different than if you devised it completely.’
The weather gods were not on The Glue Society’s side during the shoot. ‘The first shoot day we travelled up to the glacier in the snow-cat, which is like a tank – you can’t see out of it unless you’re the driver,’ says Freedman. ‘We were all excited about the amazing vista of mountains and landscapes we were about to see. And when we got to the top and all jumped out we saw nothing! Just white. White snow and zero visibility. You could not see further than a few feet in any direction. It was in fact dangerous, as if you walked ten feet in any direction you could get lost from the group and just be wandering about in “white”. So no shoot. Then we had too much snowfall so we couldn’t get up the mountain. Then we had extremely warm weather, so the snow melted in some of our locations. It was a nightmare. But these things have a way of working themselves out.’
The patchy snow was resolved in post-production, alongside other inconsistencies caused by the bad weather conditions. Otherwise, surprisingly little post-production was required on the ad. ‘The seal was shot in camera,’ says Freedman, ‘and it was as rudimentary as tossing fish at the seal for it to catch in its mouth. Then we replaced the fish with a Napoleon who we shot hanging from a wire. I like the element of chance when you do things for real – you end up with something different than if you devised it completely.’
04 An early storyboard for the ad, by the advertising agency, BETC Euro RSCG.
‘When I love the script, I don’t want to go to the shoot. If you go to the shoot, it’s impossible to do the edit.’
05 The film crew at work during the shoot in Iceland, with spectacular natural scenery as their backdrop.
‘Sometimes things come together and have “magic” and sometimes not. I think this ad just had something about it that clicked with people. It’s undoubtedly a very good script, but I think it’s one of those ads that stays with people for all sorts of reasons that are hard to pin down.’
Unusually, Xiberras didn’t attend the shoot, preferring to maintain the distance required to see the film through fresh eyes when it was delivered. ‘I decided not to go, because when I love the script, I don’t want to go to the shoot,’ he says. ‘If you go to the shoot, it’s impossible to do the edit. It’s very difficult to judge and just see the images and the edit. Personally I need space and distance, otherwise you’re too close to it.’ The tactic paid off, and Xiberras spent considerable time working on the edit of the film, ensuring that the relatively complex story was clearly conveyed in 60 seconds.
The finished ad proved immensely popular with the target French audience, and was also hugely successful around the world, despite suffering its own ‘lost in translation’ moment, when the film’s international title was changed from The March of the Emperor to March of the Penguins, somewhat undermining the ad’s central joke. The wit and humour of the commercial rose above such details, however. ‘The response to the ad was amazing,’ says Freedman. ‘You never quite know how things are going to turn out – there is always an unknown. Sometimes things come together and have “magic” and sometimes not. I think this ad just had something about it that clicked with people. It’s undoubtedly a very good script, but I think it’s one of those ads that stays with people for all sorts of reasons that are hard to pin down.’
06-09 Stills from the completed ad. The Napoleons, as imagined by the female protagonist in the spot, experience a number of challenges, including being attacked by a giant seal.