Trainline Helps Fight Chaos at the Station

Some travelers literally lose their heads

And you thought airports were a surreal experience these days.

Euro travel service Trainline and Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam book a rail journey to Weirdsville in the :30 below. You could call the results … trippy.

The work touts Trainline’s AI-driven suite of services. Shot from above, the action takes place in Budapest’s Keleti station.

Let’s watch a 10-armed dude holding court in one corner while headless travelers dance like robots at the magazine stand:

The strangest thing of all is that they still sell magazines. Kidding, of course. Print rocks.

“We divided the large hall into various quadrants, all shot from precisely the same angle, and then composited them into the large fresco,” W+K creative directors Ramona Todoca and Edouard Olhagaray tell Muse. “Lots of pre-planning went into deciding the placement and positioning of all scenes to achieve a seamless tableau of constant movement.”

Shooting in 8K allowed the team to pan, scan and digitally zoom into specific areas of interest while maintaining picture quality, they say.

“We wanted to mirror the emotion in the human experience of disruption in a playful way that treats it lightly but does not belittle it, while representing it with realism and charm.”

But, why play the decapitation card?

“The headless figures are meant to represent the feeling of being lost in the chaos and literally losing your head in the confusion,” Todoca and Olhagaray explain.

“We fitted the characters with green head-covers that were removed in post. Other than that, we aimed to achieve all effects practically, in order to retain authenticity and realism.”

Alice Kunisue directed through 100%. The work breaks this week across video, streaming, DOOH and social.