How Roller Babies Viral Video Was Made

There’s absolutely no doubt that this incredibly successful online video produced for the Evian bottled water company is adorable and highly unusual.

Total views are over 102 million, making it one of the most watched online video campaigns ever. Shorter versions are now being run on standard television.  It has inspired copycat videos.

The question for readers of Video Production Tips is, how was it done? Where did they find such talented roller skating babies?

Well, they didn’t, of course. It was all faked with green screen and computer animation. I commend the creators for doing an absolutely seamless job putting it all together.

The video news story above does a good job of showing you how this commercial was made.  Here is a text explanation.

First, babies were placed in front of green screens and cute shots were obtained. The video crew got a wide variety of facial close-ups, which were later put onto computer generated bodies.

A professional skater was videotaped doing the actual moves. Then the computer-generated baby’s body got busy and replicated the moves.

Then, they added the heads of their baby models taken earlier, attaching them to the dancing digital bodies.

Backgrounds and recognizable shots of Manhattan were edited in too.

Now that this video has had such success, it is important to remember that it took the advertising agency about a year to convince the client that roller skating babies dancing to rap music in an online video was a good approach. Now that’s tenacity and belief in your ideas!

I guess the moral of the story is, if you’re convinced that something is a great idea, then a Doubting Thomas client is not a dealbreaker. Honestly, I am not sure I would ever push something that hard, but they did, and it sure has paid off in a big way!

“Unusual” doesn’t begin to cover this video. With so many viewers who have seen all kinds of creative and bizarre happenings via video, “unusual” is not always easy to come up with!

The cute factor no doubt played heavily into the popularity of the video. Everybody loves babies! But until this spot, no one had ever seen babies acting quite like this.

Thanks for reading Video Production Tips,
Lorraine Grula

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

• What two techniques were used to create this commercial?
• Who really did the dancing?
• How long did it take the video producers to convince the client dancing babies on roller skates was a good idea?