Part of doing commercials is creating advertising, but another part of it is making people feel connected to what you’re saying," says Paul Hunter, who directs ads through bicoastal HSI Productions. "Music videos are commercials in a lot of ways. With music, if people don’t feel that it’s real, they’re not going to respond."
Hunter has helmed impressive clips for recording artists such as Eminem, Lenny Kravitz and The Deftones, and has recently created quite a buzz with spots he’s directed for Nike and Brand Jordan.
Nike’s "Freestyle," done through Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), Portland, Ore., is one of those spots that stands out. The :60 features NBA players such Vince Carter, Darius Miles, Lamar Odom, Jason Williams, and Rasheed Wallace, displaying their impressive dribbling and passing abilities. The ad emphasizes the ballplayers’ expressive body language by showing the athletes against a dark background.
The spot’s hook is its "score": layered sounds of bouncing basketballs and squeaking athletic shoes, which evoke Stomp. The various rhythms build up to create an aural latticework of bounces and squeaks before the ad peaks with an emphatic slam dunk.
Hunter says that originally the agency wanted the spot to have "a kid walking down the street, carrying a ball and humming a beatbox sound," and that one kid would pass the ball to another kid, who would pick up on what the first kid was humming.
But inspired by a music video called "Untitled," which he directed for D’Angelo and features the singer in front of a black void, Hunter decided to place the action in "Freestyle" against an empty background. "Then it would be just about the guys and not really about the environment," says Hunter. "You get to focus on who they are and how they play."
The freedom and energy of the early ’80s break-dancing was anot her inspiration for the ad. "Planet Rock," the 1982 classic by Afrika Bambaataa, was a signature track for the break-dance/hip-hop culture of that time; initially, it was going to be used to score the spot. "Then this idea was tossed around that you could make the sounds with the basketball," relates Hunter.
On the set, "we played the actual music and I told the players to dribble to the beat of the music. We took the music and separated it by tracks," says Hunter. "We got the original producers [of ‘Planet Rock’] and had them separate it. Each player bounced to a different layer. Later, we took [the song] out and replaced it with ball sounds. I told the players, ‘You guys are so incredible that you can play ball and make music.’ "
Another recent Hunter spot, Brand Jordan’s "Much Respect," via W+K, New York, opens with NBA stars Michael Finley and Eddie Jones playing on an outdoor court, and boxer Roy Jones Jr. working out. Ray Allen, of the Milwaukee Bucks, is seen in a business meeting, followed by shots of the New York Yankees’ Derek Jeter dropping in on a stickball game, and former NBA superstar Michael Jordon showing up at a gym.
"The idea was to ask, ‘How would it feel if your hero showed up in your neighborhood?’" explains Hunter. "I think the most magical thing about the spot was when we had Jordan show up at this pickup game in a gym. We didn’t tell the players he was coming. We had the camera rolling and got natural reactions out of everybody."
Hunter also directed Bridge Financial’s "Lance Armstrong" via Core, St. Louis. The spot captures the champion cyclist’s morning workout in beautifully stark images. A voiceover asks questions like, "Do you race to stay in shape?" and "Do you race to win?" Finally, the VO asks, "Or do you race to see how much distance you can put between yourself and what they said couldn’t be done?" The last line is an allusion to the fact that Armstrong came back from cancer and went on to win numerous races, including the 1999 and 2000 Tour De France championships.
Hunter studied film at California State University, Northridge. He attended classes at night because during the day he sold cutting tools. The budding director saved up enough money to shoot spec work and eventually started directing music videos through Oil Factory Films, Hollywood. He then moved on to shoot clips via F.M. Rocks, Santa Monica, before joining HSI in 1997, where he started to direct commercials.
The director says he first caught the spotmaking bug when he visited an actor friend on the set of a commercial shoot. "The first ti me I was actually inspired to get into commercials, I was on a set with Joe Pytka [of Venice, Calif.-based PYTKA]," recalls Hunter. "Right away I knew what I wanted to do."
