"They're watching you. Compiling your information. Invading your privacy. Revealing your identity. At Earthlink we would never do that. We just deliver the totally anonymous... Internet."
As the narrator creeps us out, Gondry delivers a :30 short ad - his first since Human Nature - focused again on his idea of finding "geometry in stories." He directs some 15-20 people in the same 30-second motion as they start their morning in structurally-equivalent apartments. Using a motion control rig, each person performs the same motion (even their legs are in sync). After editing, one frame of each take is shown at a time to create the effect of multiplicity. The edits retard to focus our attention on each person, helping the viewer relate on a personal level to the words "revealing your identity." The edits accelerate and we return to multiplicity.
It's fun to watch the commercial frame-by-frame. Certain elements of each room remain the same, some are similar (i.e. different colors of the same phone), and some change completely.
Michel's effects brother Olivier explains in Boards Magazine: "The Earthlink spot, it was 800 shots to this 30 second commercial. The 400,000 frames were too big for *flame and a nightmare to do on Avid. I wrote a program making it very easy to select the best frame for each character. Each character was doing almost exactly the same action but we had to pick the best frames. On Avid it is a lot of work to do this with the camera in synch."
[French effects company] Buf synched up the transitions between the four motion control cameras used by Gondry on the shoot; Twist says he was easily able to make all the necessary changes and tweaks via his software (after loading all 400,000 frames onto his PC).