A 4:42 animated documentary about the student who mailed Pepsi a $700,000 cheque for a fighter jet, told in a paper-collage style built from the original ad, the points catalogue and the federal court ruling.
Leonard v. PepsiCo is a famous case, but most people only know the punchline. The full story is a chain of documents (a TV commercial, a points catalogue, an order form, lawyers’ letters and a federal court opinion) spread over three years. The video had to make paperwork feel like a plot, keep the humour of the original ad and stay faithful to the court record.
The art direction is a paper archive: cut-out photography, torn paper, index cards, stamps and highlighter on a grid-paper background. It reads as evidence, which suits a legal story, and lets every document appear as a physical object on the desk. The arithmetic that drives the story (7,000,000 points, 190 cans a day for a hundred years, ten cents per extra point) is staged as bold typographic cards, so the viewer does the maths alongside the student. Quotes from the ruling are typed out and highlighted, and the case citation stays on screen.
The episode opens on the cheque and the jet, so the question is clear before any context arrives. Each chapter is labelled on screen (the ad, the plan, the catalogue, the money, the ruling), which gives the viewer a sense of progress through a three-year dispute, and the verdict lands in the judge’s own words.
Stills from the finished film. Every frame is designed to carry one idea, so the story stays clear even with the sound off.
→ Turn a legal dispute into a clear story with a beginning, middle and end
→ Make the arithmetic behind the plan easy to follow
→ Keep the tone of the original ad without mocking anyone
→ Stay faithful to the court record, with sources on screen
→ Create a visual style clearly distinct from the series’ data-driven episodes
→ Paper-collage art direction on a grid-paper background
→ Cut-out character and aircraft animation
→ On-screen chapter labels for each stage of the story
→ Typographic cards for every key number
→ Animated documents: catalogue, order form, cheque and letters
→ Highlighted quotes from the court opinion
→ On-screen case citation
→ 1080p delivery with English captions
A 4:42, 1080p episode that carries a three-year legal case from a TV commercial to an appeals court without losing the viewer. Next to the Knight Capital episode, it shows the range of the work: the same storytelling discipline in two completely different visual languages, one built from screens and data, the other from paper and evidence.
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