Dining and Arcade Chain's Giant Metal Claw Is a Real Grabber

With uplifting practical effects

Dispatching a giant metal claw to pluck people from their mundane lives and plop them into your gaudy establishment, where they’ll presumably spend money? That’s every retailer’s dream!

Watch it come true via impressive practical effects in the commercial below from Canadian arcade-restaurant outfit The Rec Room and agency Broken Heart Love Affair.

“The original idea stemmed from the insight that there’s an epidemic of isolation keeping us all from having fun,” BHLA creative director Marty Hoefkes tells Muse. “What we really need is to be dragged out to see our friends more often. Perhaps with a giant metal claw.”

Riding one of those things sure beats doing laundry. It’s also an elevated, unexpected delivery system for the brand message. And just a tad creepy, which works in its favor.

“We first pitched the idea in a tissue session with The Rec Room,” Hoefkes recalls. “And instead of a big discussion and rounds of iterations, the clients more or less bought it on the spot.”

“Of course, we had no idea at the time how to produce it,” he says. “But director Joachim Back and Partners Film signed on to make it happen. They had these grandiose plans that surpassed even what we had in mind.” (Back makes everything bigger, even insurance agents.)

Here, the team achieved the impressive giant claw sequences with … wait for it … a giant claw!

“All that stuff is practical, with a 10-foot metal claw,” Hoefkes says. “It closes with hydraulics, too. We were like big kids on set seeing it in action.” A second, smaller claw was employed for tighter spaces.

Stunt pros operated the rigs, raising, lowering and swinging them as needed. The claw-riders rose just a few feet above the ground, and crew members with leaf blowers provided the breeze.

After the shoot, post-production shop The Vanity inserted matte paintings, removed guide wires and generally spruced up the frames.

Paul Etienne-Cote and Circonflex provided the whimsical pop soundtrack, which adds a certain bounce to the airy visuals.

The work breaks today with social, digital, out-of-home and in-venue placements.