By the time still photographers Angela Kohler and Ithyle Griffiths learned about Amazon's open contest to create a 30-second spot for the online retailer, the couple had just one week to come up with a concept and execute it before the entry deadline. The two have an impressive portfolio of still photography for clients including Microsoft, Lexus and Old Navy, but they really had no professional experience at all with pictures that move.

That didn't stop them. They quickly came up with a stop-motion concept that they could execute in the downtown L.A. loft they share using common household items and their Canon EOS 5D Mark II. The two not only made the deadline, but their piece, "Fly Me Away," won the contest and subsequently landed them a paying gig from Amazon to create six more like it.

"Fly Me Away"
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"We misread the contest rules and thought it said 'Make your own Amazon Kindle commercial,'" Kohler shrugs. "We could have done other aspects of Amazon, apparently, but we didn't even realize it."

The two went into this spec project with about as much technical background in filmmaking and animation as they had clarity about the contest rules, which may well account for why the work stood out for the contest judges, Amazon executives and so many others who've seen "Fly Me Away" since it began airing at the beginning of this year.

In the spot, their friend, singer and model Annie Little (also the composer and singer of the background song), appears on screen with a Kindle and is transported into a whimsical stop-motion world.

"We did some tests to see how the pacing should work and how fast things really move," Griffiths explains. "We didn't get how much time it should take for things to happen."

"Stole My Heart"
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They set up a Canon 5D MkII using a Speed-Rail suspended above the wood floor of their loft and pointed it straight down. Little would lie flat on this self-styled animation stand and move in tiny increments over a seven-hour period as the photographers posed her, built the environments and changed her costumes.

A lot worked in the experiment, but they still had to discover for themselves some basic principles of animation. "We had Annie smile and un-smile over the course of six frames," he recalls.

"She didn't look like she was smiling," Kohler continues. "She looked like she was chewing gum. It wasn't right. And we didn't quite understand at first how many frames would take up 30 seconds."

But they learned quickly, and by their second seven-hour session, they'd pretty well nailed it.

A sit down on the set with Angela Kohler and Ithyle Griffiths from Lou Lesko on Vimeo.

The couple extends credit to Little for her musical contribution and for being willing and able to turn herself into an object to be animated. "She has a dance background and she's a model and actor," Griffiths notes. "It was a good combination."

Kohler adds, "It was not a comfortable position to lie in for eight hours a day, especially after we realized her head needed to be elevated a little bit off the floor the entire time. She was a trouper."

After they'd shot the requisite frames, they exported full-sized jpegs into iMovie to play back their piece as animation and exported the highest level of H.264 possible. (They ultimately had to spring for Final Cut Pro in order to add the bars and tone required for the deliver spec.)

Their subsequent spots use the same setup, but they tethered their camera to a computer via USB and a 10-foot extension so they could see what they were doing. They got a PocketWizard to trip the shutter to avoid the problem they encountered in the first spot, where the photographers had to get so close to the camera that their feet landed on the edges of a number of frames.

Kohler and Griffiths worked under a self-imposed rule that they would to do everything in camera without the option of fixing anything in post. "We could have done something in Photoshop," Kohler offers, "but we really wanted it to look like we made it with our hands. When we wanted to create the look of an ocean, we ended up using eight skeins of yarn for the water. We wanted people to think, 'They did that with something that I own.'"

Since the first spot started airing, the pair, who only wanted to make something nice for their reel and maybe collect enough prize money to buy some sexy Canon lenses, have been fielding multiple offers to direct more spots and were recently signed by Santa Monica-based Workhorse Media as commercial directors.

Koehler acknowledges that the spots' simplicity and the creators' learn-as-you-go approach likely played a significant role in making the work stand out. "Everything is so glossy right now," she says, "so technologically advanced. You can't even tell when you're watching something if a room is a room or CGI. Is that right, CGI?" she asks her partner, who nods. "We wanted this to be like you're a child again and everything's magic."