Bellybutton is one of Gondry's most widely seen commercials. To promote Levi's Superlow Jeans, we watch several girls' bellybuttons sing as they stride down a boulevard, including one kid's wide-eyed reaction. The bellybuttons belt out a new version of Diana Ross' "I'm Coming Out" sung by Jamie-Lynn Sigler, widely known as Meadow Soprano. The result is really hilarious, a bit disturbing, and quite successful.
From Creativity [getcreativity.com] magazine's July/Aug 2001 issue:
The original idea was simply to have the women manipulate their navels with their hands, according to art director Jeff Labbe. "But we got to talking with Michel, and he says, 'I want the belly button to really sing.' So we go, 'Great! How do we do that?' He says, 'Don't worry, my brother wrote a program.'"
"We had to very carefully cast for the right belly buttons," says Labbe. "You can't have one that's too deep, you lose the detailing of the movement. You can't have outies either, obviously. It has to have a mouth kind of shape. The ideal girl has a flat stomach and a flat belly button."
The key to the lip sync is a good old motion capture technique. After the stomach parade came a blue dot-painted mouth shoot of the tummy talent singing the song, which was married to the midriffs in three to four weeks of intensive animation.
The success of the ad was immediate. The then-current CEO of Levi-Strauss notes, "I've never seen an ad work so well. We put the ad out on Saturday, and on Sunday [we had a rise in sales.]" (Lehrer-MacNeil News Hour, Aug 2, 2002). You can see a clip of the commercial at Method Studios' website.