There was a lot to choose from, and all of it was good," says editor David Cornman of The Blue Rock Editing Company, New York, referring to the abundance of footage he had to work with when he cut Computer Associates’ "Amnesia," helmed by the directing team LeMoine/Miller—Rick and Steve, respectively—of bicoastal/international @radical.media.
The ad, done via Young & Rubicam (Y&R), New York, was one of six nominees for the sixth annual primetime Emmy Award recognizing commercialmaking as an art form. The other nominated spots were:
Visa’s "Broadway Tribute," re-cut as a post-9/11 tribute by Sabrina Huffman of bicoastal Crew Cuts, and helmed by @radical’s Gregor Nicholas for BBDO New York; Nike’s "Move," directed by Jake Scott of bicoastal RSA USA, and edited by Adam Pertofsky of Rock Paper Scissors, Los Angeles, for Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore.; FOX Sports’ "Nail Gun," helmed by Baker Smith of Santa Monica-based Harvest through TBWA/Chiat/Day, San Francisco, and cut by Hank Corwin of bicoastal Lost Planet; Disney’s "First Words," directed by Joe Pytka of Venice, Calif.-based PYTKA for Leo Burnett USA, Chicago, and edited by Terry Kaney of Avenue, Chicago; and Budweiser’s "Out of Towner," directed by Allen Coulter of bicoastal/international hungry man via DDB Chicago, and cut by Michael Coletta of Bug Editorial, New York.
"Amnesia," along with "Stapler" and "Sector 12," was part of a campaign promoting Computer Associates’ BrightStor storage system. "Amnesia" combines slapstick action and deadpan reactions to create its hilarity. As the ad opens, a business executive leads two assistants down an office hallway. As they make their way, the exec asks, "So Dan, do we have everything we need for this meeting?" Dan confidently smiles and points at his head and says, "It’s all right here, sir." Then Dan walks into an open file cabinet drawer, knocking himself out. A few shots later we’re in a conference room where the exec and the second assistant are about to meet with three business people. Still standing, the second assistant leans over to the seated exec and whispers, "Don’t worry, sir. He told me everything." A beat later the assistant slips and falls, banging his head on the table. As the unconscious assistant lies on the floor, the exec and the threesome look on, stunned. A voiceover says: "Is your data backup as reliable as it should be? Ours is. Bright Stor storage software from Computer Associates."
"The idea [for ‘Amnesia’], to begin, was funny," says Cornman. "They executed the idea really well. The dailies were hilarious. They had shot a lot of footage, which I put it together first, and then the creatives, Ahmer [Kalam, VP/art director at Y&R] and Rachel [Howald, VP/copywriter at Y&R], and the producer, Rich [Rosenthal], came in. We tried different takes in the cuts, and then we finally honed it down to what everybody thought was the funniest [version]."
Cornman responded to the plethora of filmed material he had to work with by providing the agency with a number of options. Kalam says that Cornman presented multiple versions of the campaign’s three spots. "They were all really funny," he notes of Cornman’s work, adding, "he brought so many different ideas and options that it helped us narrow it down to which one worked best."
Even though Lemoine and Miller weren’t present at the cutting sessions, the directing team did contribute to the editorial process. "The directors also had suggestions as to which takes to use, and which things they thought should be in the cut," explains Cornman. "[LeMoine/Miller] actually put together a cut and posted it on a Web site. We took a look at it and saw what they had done that we hadn’t done, and they saw stuff we had done that they hadn’t thought about. We met somewhere in the middle."
Cornman points out that LeMoine/Miller were sensitive collaborators. "They didn’t want to step on anybody’s toes," he notes. "They didn’t want to force ideas on anybody; they just wanted to say, ‘This might work or this might not work. This is what we thought was funny.’ "
Rich Rosenthal, an executive producer at Y&R, had previously worked with Cornman, who has been with Blue Rock for the past six years, on a documentary short called President Clinton: The Final Days, directed by Rosenthal’s brother, Phil Rosenthal, executive producer of the CBS series Everybody Loves Raymond. Kalam says that Rich Rosenthal highly recommended Cornman, and that the editor’s reel was impressive. "His timing on everything was so good," adds Howald. (Cornman recently cut three spots for Accenture out of Y&R—"X-Ray," "Opera" and "Arena—which were helmed by David Kellogg of bicoastal Anonymous Content; Cornman is also scheduled to edit another round of Computer Associates’ spots this fall, which will again be helmed by LeMoine/Miller.)
Is Cornman pleased with the Emmy nomination? "Oh yeah, it’s huge," he relates. "It’s not often that you get to work on something where it gets this much recognition—for it to be nominated for an Emmy is gigantic."
