AnimatronicBear.com receives kudos from international client when project gets the coveted weekly HotShot nod by London's SHOTS magazine. Article paraphrased below.
hotshot bear necessities- 19 August 2009This week's Hotshot from Equinox director Ram Madhvani is sure to send a shiver of pure joy down your spine, as a giant polar bear invades a train station to bust out some mentholated dance moves for Halls via Contract India...
"What more could you ask for when you're stuck in the middle of commuter central with a blocked nose, than for your own personal polar bear to come to the rescue... You can thank the ECD Raj Nair for that one! When he spoke to me about the idea of having a polar bear personifying the cold, cool mentholyptus I was hooked. And when the client backed it we knew it was going to be fun...
Where did you get the bear costume from?
The polar bear was from America... Matt Brady from the Animatronic Bear Company flew down... Matt was amazing. Somehow he remained good-spirited even when the temperature was 70 degrees inside his suit at the shoot in a hot and sweaty Indian summer.
Where did you film the spot?
We shot at Mumbai's biggest and oldest and largest station. It was originally called Victoria Terminus but now it's been renamed the Chatrapati Shivaji Station. We couldn't shut it down for the shoot so we filmed on a Sunday, with a thousand extras of our own alongside real commuters. It was a crazy shoot since every ten minutes a train would pull up at the platform and real commuters would be gaping at a polar bear in Mumbai in 40 degree heat.
