Micah Scarpelli, who cuts spots via Version2, New York, wound up in the Big Apple on a whim–the Chicago native was working as an assistant editor at Cutters, Chicago, when he decided to move to New York, although he’d never visited the city. “I just put all my stuff in a van, and came out here,” he recalls. “It was a little ambitious.”
While ambitious, it turned out to be the right move–six months after arriving in the city he started working at Version2, assisting noted cutter Vito DeSario, partner/editor at the company. “I actually went after him,” relates Scarpelli, who started at the shop in 2003. “I saw his reel online, and I liked a couple of his spots a lot, and the company seemed really creative and cool.” Working with the veteran editor proved to be an eye-opener for Scarpelli. “He can teach you a lot,” notes Scarpelli. “In the past two years, he’s become a friend and a mentor.” Some of the projects he assisted DeSario on included ads for Motorola, as well as the spot “Rewind” for the Partnership for a Drug Free America (PDFA), out of Foote, Cone & Belding, New York, and directed by Doug Nichol of bicoastal/international Partizan. The ad scored an editing honor for DeSario in the public service category at this year’s Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE) Awards.
Scarpelli had been assisting DeSario for about eight months when he got a big break–because of scheduling and time constraints, he was able to edit a multi-spot package for Subway out of McCarthy Mambro Bertino (MMB), Boston. Since becoming a full-fledged editor about a year ago, Scarpelli has cut spots for Mercedes-Benz, Jiffy Lube, Fanta, and multimedia projects, including visuals for U2’s Vertigo tour.
In fact, Scarpelli got his start in multimedia, working on video mixing and installations. It was that experience that led him to working on an ambitious project for Mercedes-Benz that was featured at the 2005 Los Angeles Auto Show earlier this year. The project involved 21 screens synched together; each showed imagery from the rich history of Mercedes-Benz. “Ninety percent of it was archival footage, all the different eras [of Mercedes], from the early 1900s to the present,” says Scarpelli. The tagline for the package: “The cars change, the reactions stay the same.” The project was done via Merkley + Partners, New York, an agency Scarpelli teamed up with on another Mercedes project, a spot called “Numbers.” The ad features images of the cars with number graphics appearing over them to illustrate how many of the cars have performed in various events. The spot ends on number one–the number of Mercedes-Benz summer sales events happening this year. “The cool thing about car work,” relates Scarpelli, ” is it’s always pretty fast motion–it’s not just talking heads.”
The editor relates that his work is heavily influenced by music–both his installation and spot work is very music-based, and visual, although Scarpelli hope to expand his storytelling/dialogue work as well. He’s done a few spots in that vein, including the Jiffy Lube ad “Everything,” out of MMB, and directed by Jeff Gorman of bicoastal Sandwick Films. In the commercial, a woman tells her teenage son that she’s off to Jiffy Lube to get a complete diagnostic on her car–they can tell her everything the auto has been up to. Her son flashes on all he’s done in the car–taking a on a romantic rendezvous, spinning the car in circles in the parking lot, partying with friends–and offers to take it in to Jiffy Lube himself. At press time, Scarpelli was about to embark on another Jiffy Lube project, as well as tackle a spot for the Mercedes-Benz Winter Event, and some work on the 2006 auto show.
