Set in a football stadium, “Football” (:60), a new spot for online dating service Match.com, finds a spectator stripping down to his underwear and running out onto the field during a football game in progress. When the guy finally stops sprinting and falls to his knees, we see a plea scrawled across his chest: Forgive me Andrea. “I love you, Andrea!” he screams before being tackled by one of the players.
After watching this spot, one is left wondering, Wow, what the hell did this guy do to Andrea that he has to go this far to try to earn her forgiveness? “That’s what we want people to think,” said Doug Raboy, managing partner/creative director of Hanft Raboy and Partners, the New York-based agency that created the spot.
Okay, so what exactly did this guy do to Andrea? Raboy laughingly refused to elaborate any further.
The director who helmed the spot, Peter Chelsom of Independent Media, Santa Monica, Calif., wasn’t any more forthcoming. Chelsom, who confirmed that a back story was created to help motivate the actors, would only say that there was a “horrendous misunderstanding” between the couple.
LOVE IS–
Part of a campaign, “Football” is one of a series of spots that deals with the subject of love. “We wanted these spots to be about something more than an online dating service. We wanted these spots to be about love. What’s more important than love? It’s more important than money, more important than success,” Raboy said. “So that’s the approach we took, and our tagline is, Love is complicated. Match is simple.”
As for the “Football” scenario in particular, Raboy noted it is a situation that everyone can relate to. “We may not have run out on a football field,” Raboy acknowledged. “But we’ve all done something so screwed up that we need to apologize in a way that’s so sincere and so meaningful that we have a chance to get someone back.”
When it came to hiring a director to helm “Football” and the two additional spots in the campaign thus far, Hanft Raboy and Partners cast a wide net. “The search was far and wide, and we chose Peter because, to put it in his own words, ‘Love is what I do,’ ” Raboy said, adopting a British accent in an attempt to mimic Chelsom.
Chelsom certainly has experience in the arena of romantic comedy, having directed films including Shall We Dance and Serendipity.
“It is what he does, and he understands it,” Raboy remarked, noting, “And our whole goal from the beginning was to treat these commercials like mini-movies, little cinematic stories.”
That approach was attractive to Chelsom, who treated “Football” as though “it was a highlight from a much longer film.”
Chelsom recently came aboard Independent Media, a shop that specializes in handling feature filmmakers for select commercials. The company is headed by executive producer Susanne Preissler.
As previously noted, Chelsom went as far as to provide the actors–Scott Rinker as the guy a.k.a. “Hero,” and Carla Toutz as Andrea–with a detailed back story from which to draw inspiration for their performances.
He also surrounded himself with moviemaking talent, including production designer Philip Messina, whose credits include director Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich, Traffic and Ocean’s Twelve, and DP Bob Richardson, a two-time Oscar winner. In fact, the night before the shoot for “Football,” Richardson actually won an Academy Award for cinematography for his work on director Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator.
GAME ON
Chelsom and his crew shot “Football” in one day at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.
Much of what you see was caught on camera: Chelsom hired stunt coordinator Allan Graf, whose credits include films such as Friday Night Lights and Any Given Sunday, to choreograph a football game, and he shot about 200 extras cast as spectators from angles designed to create the illusion that the stadium was packed, leaving R!OT Manhattan with a small amount of crowd duplication to perform.
In shooting the spot, Chelsom went for a “sniper look,” aiming to make it seem as though the main character’s actions just happened to be caught on camera. “The look of the film is slightly desaturated,” Chelsom pointed out. “If you get too glossy with this kind of thing, you stop believing it.”
In Chelsom’s mind, there was one shot that would make or break the spot–and that’s the wide one in which we see the guy run out onto the field. He shot that scene first. “It was like 6:30 in the morning,” Chelsom recalled, “and after getting that, I turned around, and I said to everybody, ‘We’ve just shot three-quarters of the commercial before 7 o’clock’ because that’s what mattered most.”
While Chelsom surrounded himself with feature film talent on the field, he went with an experienced spot editor, Carlos Arias of Final Cut, New York. “When I do this kind of commercial, I love going with film people in some categories–the only category I don’t go with feature people is in the editing,” Chelsom said. “I go with a commercial editor because that’s the area where I think you have to be realistic about the fact that it is a commercial, and they are used to cutting at a commercial pace.”
Chelsom, who praised Arias for his speed and inventiveness, took part in the edit. “To me, not being involved in the edit is unthinkable,” Chelsom shared. “If someone doesn’t want me in the edit room, that’s fine. But I shoot to cut, and I know exactly why I shot stuff. I will always, always offer a cut. I don’t care how long it takes me and the fact that I’m not being paid for it doesn’t matter.”
“Football” is accompanied by a piece of music with an operatic feel composed by Human, New York. The track was chosen because “it was almost like an opera was being played out on the field,” Raboy remarked.
Given the emotional impact of “Football” and the unanswered questions that the spot leaves viewers with, might Match.com be interested in having Hanft Raboy and Partners further explore the storyline? “If there is enough of a reaction,” Raboy mused, “I think the answer could be yes.”
