An extremely tall man struggles to make his way from a window seat on a cramped airplane to the bathroom and back in a new :60 for Comcast/PBS KIDS Sprout titled “Tall.” Along the way, he inadvertently disturbs his fellow passengers, many of whom are trying to sleep. Judging by the disapproving looks they shoot his way, none of them has any sympathy for the lanky man’s plight. But, ultimately, we see that someone does understand. It’s a little girl seated nearby, who once the tall guy takes his seat, turns to him and simply says, “It’s not that easy being green,” eliciting a smile from the weary traveler.
Quietly effective, the spot is one of three–the other two are “Foreign Relations” and “Barney”–created by Goodby Silverstein & Partners (GS&P), San Francisco, and directed by Jeffery Plansker of bicoastal Supply and Demand, designed to promote the launch on Comcast Digital Cable of a new on-demand destination, PBS KIDS Sprout, which will offer programming for pre-schoolers 24 hours a day.
In creating the spots, aimed at mothers, GS&P art director Stephen Goldblatt and copywriter Al Kelly wanted to show “just how valuable PBS programming is as opposed to a lot of the other kids programming out there,” Goldblatt explained, noting, “Kids can watch the PBS programming and can learn from it and apply it in the real world.” (In the case of the little girl in “Tall,” she picked up the “It’s not that easy being green” reference from Sesame Street‘s Kermit the Frog.)
For his part, GS&P partner/creative director Jamie Barrett loved the concept Goldblatt and Kelly came up with. “I just loved this notion that kids programming in very real ways can influence how kids and, ultimately, adults behave in the real world,” Barrett mused.
Plansker was also impressed. “I thought the premise was extremely smart–the idea that PBS programming enables children to go out into the world with something useful to say,” Plansker commented, noting the spots as presented to him were quite polished. “It’s becoming rarer these days for me to see ideas that I look at and don’t feel like I have to change in any way.”
As for why the agency hired Plansker to direct “Tall” and the other spots in the campaign, Barrett said it was because the director is a master of nuance and subtlety. “If you look at his work, you see he tries to underplay stories and events and characters. He lets you find the story as opposed to putting it in your face,” Barrett said, adding, “His work is always very sophisticated and filmic. We just thought that it would be a really interesting pairing, advertising for kids programming being handled by somebody like Jeffery with a real sophisticated eye.”
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Plansker and DP Kyle Kibbe shot “Tall” on a mock-up of a commercial airliner cabin at Air Hollywood in San Fernando, Calif. Plansker has actually used Air Hollywood’s sets before–he recently shot a short film called The Lion Still Has Wings, which was part of the Sony Dreams project, at the facility.
Air Hollywood’s jet cabin set-ups are so convincing that it is easy to forget you’re not actually in a real airplane when you’re working there, according to Plansker. “More than once [while shooting “Tall”], I was sitting in one of the passenger seats talking about some aspect of this job and completely forgot I was on this stage. I thought I was in flight somewhere,” the director related.
While his set was ready-made, casting the lead roles in “Tall” was a real challenge, particularly when it came to finding a really tall guy. “There just aren’t that many tall actors out there,” Plansker said, noting he was looking for someone who stood well above seven-feet tall. He finally found his man in actor Roger Morrissey, who not only met the height requirement but could also act.
Meanwhile, Sydney Sailor was cast as the little girl in the spot. Plansker said she was a real professional and easy to work with. “I grew up in a family of five kids, so I have had a lot of practice with little siblings, getting them to do my bidding,” Plansker said, laughing. “It felt like I was dealing with my little sister back in the day.”
Once the shoot wrapped, Jim Hutchins of HutchCo Technologies Inc., Los Angeles, cut “Tall.” Michael Anastasi of stimmung, Santa Monica, completed the sound design.
An interesting aside: It turns out that Morrissey, the actor who played the tall guy, wasn’t unknown to GS&P’s Barrett. “As a tall person, I always like to give opportunities to other freakishly tall people, Barrett, who stands six-foot-six, shared laughing, “and I did a commercial about ten years ago for Nike, and we needed to find the tallest person we could. We cast this guy [Morrissey] in L.A. Then when we were casting this commercial, we said we needed the tallest guy in L.A., and this same guy showed up. I thought it was funny that this guy is clearly carving out a living as the designated tall guy.”