Xfinity Classes Up Frankenstein's Monster

Watching NBCU content makes him feel more human

Can binging Comcast and NBCUniversal content turn a gruesome, growling Frankenstein’s monster into a cultured, erudite dude who’s all about entertaining friends and preparing fine cuisine?

Just call him Frank from now on! And please, pass the wine.

Goodby Silverstein & Partners and Park Pictures director Lance Acord created this very entertaining (and vaguely Halloween-themed) Xfinity spot that drops today:

“We shot in a studio outside Budapest,” agency co-chair Jeff Goodby tells Muse. “Lance built 99 percent of what you see in the film practically, with a few obvious exceptions like the animated spark of the Tesla coil.” The exteriors were filmed on location in Slovakia at Orava Castle, which appeared in the 1922 horror classic Nosferatu.

“We worked closely with teams at NBCUniversal to make sure the set was true to both the 1931 classic Universal Monsters film and the new Monsters Unchained attraction at Epic Universe in Orlando,” says Dustin Hayes, VP of the Xfinity brand at Comcast. “We used the same details of the lab in our set to film the spot. We also worked closely with the park’s makeup and prosthetics team to recreate the creature’s look—modernizing the classic vmonster for today’s world.”

Each makeup application for actor Nick Delvalle took four hours to complete, and the results are impressive.

“The idea was that the monster’s evolution to becoming human needed to be slow and subtle, so we wanted the actor to go from stiff, monster-like challenges with fine motor skills to the human fluidity in his movements you see at the end of the spot,” says Goodby.

“That posed an interesting question—how would his speech evolve? Because he only has a couple lines—one at the beginning where he can’t say ‘boy’ and the decidedly articulate ‘bangs’ line at the end—we eventually arrived at giving him a posh British accent for the finale. But that was only after a fair amount of discussion and experimentation while filming the dinner scene.”

“The prosthetics limited his forehead movement, which meant the emotion had to come from the eyes and occasional smile,” he says.

Delvalle’s performance anchors the story. The creature’s dawning humanity shines through, adding a suitably human touch that’s in keeping with Boris Karloff’s classic portrayal of the Modern Prometheus.