The 139-second (2m19s) piece is a continuous tracking shot of a frozen moment after an armoured car heist gone wrong, with robbers dressed in clown masks holding a pitched battle with police officers inside a hospital.
Passing a ward where more figures are shooting at each other, the camera reaches a clown carrying a sack of cash who has just been shot in the back, before panning right to reveal a team of officers surrounding a man stripped to his underwear.
After consultation with Stinkdigital about the possibility of having the tracking shot move through a frozen moment in time,[4] the team brought on director Adam Berg, who had produced a similar advertisement for JC Jeans in 2006.
[5][6] Working together with Stinkdigital executive producer Mark Pytlik, Berg began brainstorming ideas for the piece in February, including car chases and bank robberies.
[4] To speed up the location scouting, director of photography Fredrik Backar and post supervisor Richard Lyons accompanied the recce teams.
[2] Eventually, the team discovered an old Communist university[6] which had been converted into a sports college, and gained permission to dress the location as a hospital.
[7] The 60-strong[10] cast of extras mostly comprised Czech dancers and stuntmen, who had the muscle control necessary to stay sufficiently still for the extended filming sessions.
[6] Three cranes (a Fisher, a SuperTechnoCrane 50, and a Scorpio) and a motion-controlled rig were needed to produce the range of movement the camera takes through the scenery.
[6] The palette for each room was slightly altered to give the illusion of separate spaces,[12] and the colour grading was deliberately made "flat" to make video effects work easier.
[6] When the work was completed, another telecine transfer was performed to push the contrast and blend the added effects with the live-action footage.
[6][12] Carousel had been intended from the start to be primarily web-based,[13] as it was felt that the length and level of violence in the piece were too great for screenings on television to be an option.
Buffering begins while users select their internet connection type on a page designed to look like an MPAA certification, and continues through a cinematic title sequence.
[11] A number of celebrities commented on the quality of the ad; actor Ashton Kutcher pointed followers of his Twitter account to it,[4] and hip hop artist Kanye West referred to it as "hands down the best video of the year".
The video begins by zooming into a Philips 21:9 LCD television, and contains footage from Carousel, as well as scenes of 50 Cent dressed as one of the robbers.
[22] Other potential winners in the Film category included Fate for Nike-brand sportswear, House of Cards for the homelessness charitable organisation Shelter, and Secrets and Lies for Levi's-brand jeans.
"[28] Campaign declared that "It took the prize at Cannes not because it was made for online, but because it succeeds where many ordinary ads fail – it draws viewers in voluntarily"[13] Media outlets made comparisons between Carousel and the opening scenes of the 2008 film The Dark Knight, in which criminals wearing clown masks rob a bank under instructions from the Joker.
The launch trailer for the 2013 video game Payday 2 is strongly based on Carousel, depicting a similar still scene of robbers wearing clown masks battling police.