Virgin Atlantic launches a new safety video, an animated film, that is more likely to be watched by frequent passengers than previous traditional instructional spots. For the new project, the airlines company tapped the Art & Graft design and motion studio that created a 6-minute spot focusing on a character (e.g. a flier), who learns the safety rules in unconventional settings, movie genres.

The new film titled “Trip: The Virgin Atlantic Safety Film,” which replaces the previous in-flight film created by Nexus almost 12 years ago, uses various film genres to make the narrative not only instructional, but engaging as well. The protagonist, a middle-aged man who is not new on board, falls asleep and gets the rules delivered to him in an entertaining format. He gets into the very middle of various movies, from action and film noir to sci-fi and western, to name just a few, and discovers the basics of onflight behaviour there.

The 6-minute spot pays tribute to Beatles-era animation style, highly-recognizable James Bond-style sequence and more. The video merges hand-drawn illustrations with 3D techniques, and also uses the music and sound by Brains & Hunch composed specially for the project. It took 6 months to produce the clip. In fall 2013, Virgin America launches a choreographic safety guidelines clip for the American flights.

“Just as the Virgin passengers are about to set off we wanted to take them on a little journey of our very own,” commented Mike Moloney, founder of Art & Graft. “Mirroring the usual apathy toward safetymessages we created a surprising and playful series of genre-based film scenes to convey all the necessary information. This approach felt inclusive to everyone and a nice way to pique the interest of all ages onboard.”