The work for AirPods has always been rooted in movement and magic. For this year’s holiday campaign, we decided to showcase the new “Share Audio” feature of AirPods to encourage people to feel the magic of sharing a great song with someone. Tonally, the brief was to break the mold of sentimental holiday campaigns. It had to be big, fun and of course, magical--ideally through practical effects.

Departing from traditional holiday campaigns, we decided to evoke the experience of a winter wonderland in a place you’d least expect it. Set in Buenos Aires, the film features two friends sharing the magic of AirPods and turning outrageous objects into snow—a car, a chicken, even a speeding semi-truck. We used a combination of practical and CG effects and off the street casting add authenticity.

To create the illusion of objects magically transforming into snow, we combined CG with practical effects using live explosives. We even exploded the Apple logo practically on set. The dancers performed stunts like jumping off a 32 foot bridge on wires to simulate free falling into a semi-truck.

Many of the effects we created involved some complicated interactions with the talent and were shot at 500 fps slow motion on a Phantom, so our CG snow setup had to be flexible enough to work in super slow motion, but also be able to scale for objects of different sizes, so that our skateboard and semi-truck could react differently when 'poofed'.