Director Rob Luehrs–who just signed with Santa Monica-headquartered Reactor Films for spot representation (see separate news story on page 6)–caught the attention of several notable production houses via a reel of spec work, including Nike’s “Shutter Speed,” which is this week’s entry for “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery.
Luehrs had been on staff at Euro RSCG, New York, for the past eight years, initially as an art director and then moving up the ranks to creative director of Euro RSCG Tonic. While he will continue to be involved creatively in select projects for the agency on a freelance basis, Luehrs maintains a prime focus on his directorial career at Reactor. Michael Romersa, owner/executive producer of Reactor, gravitated toward Luehrs based on the personal rapport they established, the director’s agency creative sensibilities and his high caliber spec fare.
“Shutter Speed” starts out with a mundane slice of life. Two tourists–a man and a woman–on a bridge ask a young woman to take a snapshot of them. With camera in hand and kneeling down to shoot up at the pair, the gal is about to click the picture when a man walking his dog moves through the viewfinder frame. She pauses and just when she’s ready to click off a shot, two women pass by. Not wanting yet another surprise subject to saunter through her field of vision, the woman puts the camera down at her side. She and the tourists look both ways. We see that there’s nothing approaching the bridge from either direction. The gal then gets ready to take the picture. Suddenly, another visual perspective takes hold as we see a fast moving motion picture camera move across the bridge, with our POV zipping past the bridge’s guardrails as well as the dotted center line of the road.
The woman then snaps the picture but immediately has a puzzled facial expression as she looks at the digital viewfinder displaying what she has shot. The tourists then get a look-see, finding that their two-shot is instead a three-shot as a world-class runner has zipped across the frame. The camera allows the woman to digitally advance what was captured, revealing the runner’s leg bolting through the field of vision and then a foot wearing a state-of-the-art, cool-looking Nike sneaker.
The couple and the good samaritan picture taker look perplexed as they gaze down the road. “That’s incredible,” says the guy as the slogan, “Run faster” is supered on screen, accompanied by the nikefree.com website address.
Luehrs served as director and creative director/writer/art director and financier for “Shutter Speed,” enlisting the support of a friend, producer David Wolfson, who provided production support via his Spoon Films in Austin, Texas. The spot was shot in Southern California’s Sepulveda Dam area by DP Vance Burberry.
Creative genesis The creative inspiration for the spot came when Luehrs was on a run along a boardwalk, at which he intersected two tourists. An avid runner, he then wrote “Shutter Speed” and tucked the concept away for when he eventually would helm it to help advance his longstanding directorial aspirations. “I liked the juxtaposition of a world class runner with somewhat goofy tourists and an amateur photographer,” said Luehrs. “It’s the dynamic of when someone takes a picture and they later find out there’s a UFO in it. There’s a kind of intrigue there. In this case, it led to the ultimate product shot, which we see in the camera viewfinder–only the digital breakdown can capture the shoe and the runner as he blew past.”
Luehrs chose Nike because the advertiser is “at the pinnacle of commercialmaking. If you’re going to take that leap to shoot a spec reel and want to be able to compete with top talent, Nike for me was a logical choice.”
Tone savvy Luehrs added that an important consideration was to capture the tone of the advertiser, in this case the cool, hip vibe of Nike. “So much of what you’re selling is the tone and the brand’s personality,” he related. “I took the same approach in trying to do justice to the advertiser’s tone in my other spec spots as well [for Ford and a Mega Millions lottery game].”
Romersa found that aspect of Luehr’s spec work particularly appealing. “A lot of filmmakers will create spec commercials from solely a filmmaker’s point of view, trying to shoot something cool that the audience can hopefully relate to on some level,” observed Romersa. “Rob did that but he also approached his spec pieces with an advertising man’s eye, keenly aware of the client’s tone and objectives and the need to appeal to certain targets and markets.”
