Director Henry Lu, who is represented by bicoastal Moxie Pictures, didn’t have any trouble finding talent willing to appear in a multi-spot campaign he recently shot in and around Dallas promoting ESPN’s broadcast of NASCAR races. In fact, when potential performers learned that he would be shooting some of the scenes on the infield during the Dickie’s 500 race at the Texas Motor Speedway, they were clamoring to get hired. “They were like, ‘You don’t have to pay me!’ ” Lu recalled with a laugh.
With a cast of rather enthusiastic actors, Lu and DP Scott Henrickson spent six days shooting four commercials, including the :30 “The Sound of Speed,” SHOOT’s Top Spot of the Week. The campaign was created by Wieden + Kennedy, New York; incidentally, Lu was once a producer at W+K, Portland, Ore.
Relying on a series of vignettes and sound design, “The Sound of Speed” depicts children appreciating the sound of speed. While one little boy uses a clothespin to attach a playing card to the spokes of his bike tire so he can hear the whirr as he pedals along, other kids get amped up playing a video game featuring loud racecars. Older kids zoom about outside in go-carts. Elsewhere, a child sits in the back seat of a car, lulled into a tranquil state by the sound of the car and the passing traffic.
The spot winds up on the infield at a NASCAR race where a boy cruises around on his bike, hopping off and rushing up to the chain link fence that separates the infield from the track just in time to see and hear the cars roar by. The look on his face is one of awe. The commercial ends with the tagline, “It’s the life.” According to W+K Art Director Stuart Jennings, the commercial is designed “to speak to our primal, instinctive attraction to speed in general.”
Why focus on kids? “It’s visually easier to communicate with kids–they show fascination a lot better than adults do,” Jennings mused.
Jennings thought up the vignettes featured in the commercial with his W+K copywriter colleague Greg Kalleres. Executive creative directors Kevin Proudfoot and Todd Waterbury and creative directors Derek Barnes and Paul Renner also worked on the project.
Autobiographical On the shoot, Lu said he couldn’t help but tease Jennings. “It was basically his childhood we were filming,” the director said. “He had go-carts. He had a dirt bike. He had an old car.”
Well, even if it was somewhat autobiographical, “The Sound of Speed” successfully taps into a more universal interest in and curiosity about speed.
While the concept was solid, the challenge for Lu was to create moments that felt real, as though they were found, and one of the keys to making that happen was finding the right talent. “The way I cast, I don’t get people to act out things. I usually just have a conversation with them,” Lu said. “It’s more, ‘Hey, what did you do on the weekend?’ “
When it comes to getting the right performances from kids, “A lot of it is about the environment you keep on set. You really have to make them feel comfortable,” Lu shared.
Whiz kid The most compelling performance in “The Sound of Speed” comes when the kid who is riding his bike around the infield during a race dashes to the fence to see the cars whiz by. The boy in the role had watched NASCAR races on TV but had never been to one. “That boy’s expression in that you would never be able to fake,” Lu said, noting, “The sound is just amazing. I can’t tell you how loud it is.”
The deafening sound wasn’t exactly conducive to communicating. “I would be sitting there yelling to the boy from a foot away, and he couldn’t hear me. Then I would have to yell right beside his ear, and then he could hear me. Even when the cars were not in front of us, you could not hear yourself think,” Lu related.
Away from the roar of the cars, Crandall Miller of The Whitehouse, New York, set about editing the spot, putting the vignettes together to create a narrative arc. “Crandall did a really good job in getting the flow,” Lu praised, adding, “They get my vibe [at The Whitehouse]. I’ve worked a lot with Whitehouse, and Crandall’s a friend of mine, so they understand how real I want things to be–I just kind of get really bothered by commercials that are overproduced and too slick.”
Miller also handled the sound design, using both audio from the shoot as well as other effects to help amplify that sound when necessary.
Looking back on the job, Lu noted that he had the pleasure of not only shooting some great spots but also getting to immerse himself in the whole NASCAR scene. Before shooting the campaign, he studied up on the sport and got to attend a race in Atlanta. “It’s actually fascinating, and that’s what made it a really unique opportunity,” the Toronto native reflected. “Whenever you can get yourself into and watch a culture first-hand like that, it’s interesting. You get to meet a subculture that is so different from what you’re used to every day.”
