Christmas gets more expensive every year. Agency Deutsch called on Dancing Diablo's team to help communicate that message through a lighthearted holiday Web video for PNC Wealth Management.

The company presented this year's Christmas Price Index in an animation/live-action video that relays the cost of the gifts listed in the holiday song 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' in a whimsical and upbeat way. The 3:30 video, entitled "Winter Numberland," was created for PNC's Christmas Price Index Web site.

The creatives at Deutsch came up with a charming concept, then called on the team at Dancing Diablo to bring it to life—from animation through postproduction. The DUMBO-based studio designed and created the animation elements. Their team also fabricated the sets, directed and produced the live-action segments, scouted locations, and edited and composited the job.

PNC's animation/live action presentation of the 2009 Christmas Price Index offers a delightful mix of entertainment and reality, bedding hard facts in visually captivating imagery. Deutsch decided to integrate the look of the video into their interactive Web site.

The video begins with simulated red curtains that open to reveal the delightful three-act video on a proscenium stage, as PNC Wealth Management executive vice president Jim Dunigan introduces the piece and narrates the pricing as the song plays in the background.

Act 1 reveals a snowy landscape populated by costumed elementary school kids. A partridge unfurls a scroll showing his price decrease, a turtle dove takes wing and flies over the set, a French hen brandishes a baguette to draw her price tag in the air and a calling bird plays a stylized horn that spills out numbers instead of notes.

In a mountainous locale Act 2 finds a girl wearing a pricey golden ring around her waist, a goose hatching numbers and eggs in her nest, a swan swimming in choppy waters and a milkmaid dancing with a cow.

Act 3 concludes in a village where a lady dancing does a graceful pirouette, a lord with a too-big crown leaps so hard that he boing-boings off the set, a piper produces numbers along with sweet musical notes and a drummer boom-booms a finale.

"The client's original concept called for the prices to be detailed within a school play with us 'puppeting' the children after they were shot," recalls Dancing Diablo founder Beatriz Ramos, who directed the live action. "But after some experimentation, we realized that it would be more effective to shoot the kids as if they were acting in the play, and then create various animated elements to add a dimension of magic to the piece."

The Jalopy Theater in Red Hook, Brooklyn, provided the perfect location for Ramos, who shot all the live action of the children in the roles of the gifts against greenscreen. Dancing Diablo taped the live action using a RED ONE camera.

"Finding both the right location and the perfect cast of kids was a challenge," she reports. "And making 14 costumes for kids we hadn't cast yet—and whose sizes we didn't know—was also something of a design challenge."

"We felt strongly that the Web video needed to have a 'homemade' look to it, while maintaining a cohesive artistic style that made it interesting to view," adds Ramos. "So we created all of the props and set pieces used by the kids in a skewed or oversized scale in cardboard, and built miniaturized sets to composite the kids into later on in the postproduction process."

The hyperactive numbers, which dynamically chart each gift's price rise or decline, were created in CGI, and then given the look of cardboard so they would seamlessly blend with the rest of the piece. The live action was then edited in Apple Final Cut Pro, and animated elements were composited with Adobe After Effects to bring the Christmas Price Index's magical tale to life.

Eve Kornblum, Deutsch's executive vice president, co-director of broadcast production, notes, "When this project came across my desk, I knew Beatriz and her team at Dancing Diablo would make magic out of it. Everything they touch has an artistic and incredibly unique quality to it. Even with the production headaches of no time, the need for a live-action shoot (with kids!!) and extensive animation, they took on this job and made it soar. They are problem solvers and artists of the highest order."

Thanks to the weak economy in 2009 the PNC Christmas Price Index increased by a modest 1.8 percent compared to last year in the whimsical economic analysis by PNC Wealth Management based on the prices of gifts in the holiday classic, "The Twelve Days of Christmas." According to the 26th annual survey, the price tag for the PNC CPI is $21,465.56 in 2009, just $385.46 more than last year. It is the smallest increase since 2002, when the index fell 7.6 percent.