The film begins with a woman sat in a toilet cubicle scrolling through numerous articles stating that ‘phones are bad’. She is becoming increasingly alarmed when a swirling vortex suddenly appears in the ceiling above and sucks her phone from her hands. The phone travels through a wormhole before appearing in the sky and shooting into the hands of the captain of the Titanic. Now equipped with the phone and GPS, the captain orders for the ship to be turned, in time to save both ship and crew. The phone is then transported to further significant moments in history to comically save the day: starving Neanderthals digitally order food; Henry VIII’s wives escape execution; Eve is too distracted my Adam’s social media to eat the apple; Ancient Rome is saved after finding a leader online and photo evidence of Moses parting the Red Sea is obtained.

At a time when we are constantly being told that we use our mobile phones too much, that they are bad for our mental health, that they are destroying our ability to socialise in person and that the phone waves will damage our brains, Three UK is taking on the cynics and bringing some balance to the debate with its new brand campaign #PhonesAreGood. Three tackles the topical debate that ‘phones are bad’ by humorously reimagining pivotal moments in history and demonstrates how each scene would have been made better if phones had been available.

Although the CGI team started developing assets ahead of the shoot, the post schedule for the job was exactly 16 days from a locked edit to on-air delivery. This, along with the nature of the spot - whereby the viewer jumps around through time - meant that there were very different challenges to solve, including creature work, character animation and full CGI environments. The character animation included creating the scruffy raven for the Neanderthal scene and a photo-real snake for the Garden of Eden. We also developed a full CGI solution for the Red Sea that was simulated in Houdini. For the Rome scene, we used photographs of modern Rome to build a matte-painting and then added VFX elements of fire and smoke. The wide Titanic scene was also realised fully in CGI; multiple simulation elements were created for the water, chimney smoke and general wintery airborne atmospherics.