When it comes to directing commercials, Errol Morris believes in both quality and quantity. "Sometimes, I tell people that my method is, ‘Buy two, get one free,’" laughs the noted documentarian, who is represented for spots by bicoastal/international @ra dical.media.
Nothing illustrates that statement better than the recently completed Citibank package that Morris directed via Fallon Minneapolis. The agency creatives asked him for three or four :30s; the director delivered 24.<br clear="none"/><br clear="none"/>So far, five of the spots—"Trombone," "Spinning Kid," Ukulele," "Splurge" and "Bunny Face"—have aired. The simple yet memorable ads—all of which end with the tagline, "There is more to life than money"—depict ordinary people engaged in leisure activities that range from the quirky to the extraordinary. For example, "Bunny Face" shows a close-up of a freckle-faced young woman, who imitates a bunny by repeatedly wrinkling up her nose and sticking out her front teeth, while "Ukulele" features a young man singing a love song as he plays the instrument.<br clear="none"/><br clear="none"/>Morris says he was intrigued by the assignment from the start. The creative team from Fallon approached the director because of many factors, including a viewing of his first documentary, Gates of Heaven, a 1978 offering about a pet cemetery. "There is a clip of a woman with her dog in the film," he relates. "It’s just a one-shot. She’s singing and the dog’s singing. They wanted to use that for one of the Citibank spots, and they wanted me to create three to five spots more spots like it. —I’m not exactly sure how you would describe them—quintessential moments, idiosyncratic moments, strange moments, whatever. But the idea of actually doing that sort of thing is something that I’ve tried to do in my own work. It certainly appealed to me as the basis for a series of thirty-second spots." <br clear="none"/><br clear="none"/>The director, who was given three days to shoot the moments, took the concept and ran with it. "We decided to see how many we could shoot within that period," recalls Morris, who took an eclectic approach to the technical aspects as well. "Some times, I shoot with one camera, sometimes with multiple cameras. Sometimes I use one stock or one gauge of film; sometimes I shoot with a whole range of different gauges and stocks, from Super 8 to 35, black-and-white, color, color negative, color reversal—you name it. This was one of those jobs where I did that. It was a kitchen sink type of job, where we had a lot of cameras, a lot of ideas."<br clear="none"/><br clear="none"/>The "stars" of the spots came from many different places. "We cast the m in the same way that I’ve been casting commercials in recent years," says Morris. "It’s a combination of traditional casting and going out on the street, looking for real people."<br clear="none"/><br clear="none"/>Two people assisted Morris with the talent search: casting director Justin Rice, and Rick Pagano, who has cast such movies as One True Thing and Alien Resurrection. "We assembled this strange, oddball cast from all sorts of different places," Morris reports. <br clear="none"/><br clear="none"/>In one spot, for instance, a woman with a camera endlessly directs her friend to come closer, then farther away, then left, then right, as the picture-taker attempts to snap a photo. "We saw them in Santa Monica on the beach, doing exactly that," reveals Morris. "We just grabbed them and brought them to one of our locations." And the star of "Bunny Face" was one of Pagano’s assistants. "Rick asked her, ‘Is there anything you can do that’s peculiar or unusual?’ She started making the bunny face, so we cast her."<br clear="none"/><br clear="none"/>Only four Southern California locations, including a ranch house and a garage, were used. But thanks to the wide variety of faces and film techniques, the 24 spots appear to have been shot all over the country. "They look very different in character and in style," Morris states. "I actually am very, very proud of the campaign. I think it’s one of the best things I’ve done."
