All behind the scenes of the new Tiscali ad created by Mashfrog Creative Solutions

It has been on air on TV since the 2nd of November and on all the main social channels and is already going strong: we are talking about the new Tiscali ad made by Mashfrog Creative Solutions. An original, ironic and cheerful ad that celebrates love for the Internet and in a few seconds makes us get up from our chairs and dance to the rhythm of Haddaway's "What is love?". The Mashfrog Group company dedicated to the production of multimedia content achieves a new success, producing this ad in record time and overcoming many technical, logistical and creative difficulties. We spoke directly with Fabrizio Varrenti, CEO of Mashfrog Creative Solutions, Davide Lemma, Executive Producer and Roberto Tafuro, who dealt with post-production, whom we asked to tell us about the most complex aspects they had to face in the making of this ad, as well as the great satisfaction in having made a product of such a high level.

High expectations and tight timelines: the two main challenges of this project

This communication activity is part of a very particular context, which made it more complex and challenging than others. On the one hand, there were the needs of the customer, who returned to communication with a campaign that had the challenging objective of joyfully showing the positioning of the Company two months after the merger with the retail branch of Linkem: Tiscali harmoniously combines all existing connection technologies - thanks to the agreements in place with all wholesale network operators - to bring customers the best products available at an equal price for all; on the other hand there were the tight timescales, against a production of cinematic dimensions. 

All the phases of the project were characterised by a high degree of complexity: from the preparation phase to the finding of the location, but also the presence of numerous actors and the need to shoot in a central square of the city, everything contributed to making this production really challenging, as Fabrizio confirms:

"The challenge was precisely to complete, in a very short time, a project on which there was so much pressure and so much expectation, and to do it at the highest level. Having created this ad in a short time, guaranteeing high quality is a huge added value for my team".

Location and director, two crucial choices 

One of the most challenging elements of this production was the choice of location, a square in the centre of Rome where there were two schools, two Post Offices and a Fire Station. Davide explains to us better:

"Despite the difficulties, we chose that location because it was the director's first choice. There was an important productive effort to support the choices that times would have excluded, however, we have did not shrink or allow ourselves to be deterred in the face of difficulties; on the contrary, we doubled our energies".

Another aspect that contributed to the success of this ad was the choice of the director, Marco De Aguilar, a professional with great experience in international ads, with whom the Mashfrog Creative Solutions team had already had the opportunity to collaborate. 

"The director was very thorough and never left anything to chance. We chose him both because we already know him, and because of his great experience in ads of this kind, a quality that allowed him to immediately interpret the needs of the customer. We were aware of his meticulousness, but at the same time we knew that knowing his methods, his requests and his expectations, it would be a bit of a challenge compared to the times available"

Says Davide, the Executive Producer who coordinated the work. 

"We are really very proud to have been able to create a high-level product that would normally require at least twice, if not three times as much time as we had available. Everyone worked so precisely and professionally that in the end we did not run into any delays from any point of view"

Concludes Davide. 

Finally, some anecdotes from the filming

To conclude, we asked Roberto, who was involved among other things in the editing of the ad, to tell us what was from his point of view the greatest issue encountered and what was, on the other hand, the most fun aspect of his work.

"One of the biggest difficulties was having to edit the 15-minute ad version as the very first thing." We had a lot of fun footage and we felt a bit 'compressed' facing the editing of the short versions. So with Marco (the director, ed.) we decided to assemble all the footage shot, so as to have a timeline from which to extract the best sequences. As we watched the very good actors dancing, we became more and more aware of all the energy used to perform the choreography at its best, but at the same time we had a crazy time, because their expressions were hilarious. We were also interested in taking imperfect movements, which gave the idea of the spontaneity of all the actors involved. When we came to put together the close-ups, we fell in love with some of them, so much so that we dedicated memorable inserts to them. In particular, the actor who plays the cable man turned out to be pure dynamite. On the set, he started dancing and it was really hard to cut his performance. Every move was perfect!"

Congratulations again to the colleagues of Mashfrog Creative Solutions and, for those who have missed it, here is the ad: