Like birds of a feather, NFL football players flock together and migrate towards training camp in a Reebok :60 titled “Migration” that was created by New York-based mcgarrybowen and directed and shot by Janusz Kaminski, who is represented for spots via Independent Media, Santa Monica.
While so much sports-related advertising is macho, aggressive and terribly unoriginal, “Migration,” stands out from the pack for being powerfully quiet and even soulful.
“We really wanted to capture the feeling of pre-season–the mental aspect of it,” said mcgarrybowen creative director Eric Segal, noting the goal was to get as far away as possible from “the typical and expected hard-hitting training footage and whatnot you so often see with football.”
The agency also wanted to promote the Reebok NFL Equipment Speedwick Tee and does a good job of it–all of the players featured in the spot, including the New York Giants’ Eli Manning, his brother Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts and the Dallas Cowboys’ DeMarcus Ware, are wearing the training tops yet the inclusion of the product doesn’t seem forced but rather natural.
As “Migration” opens, we see the football players enjoying their respective summer vacations. While Chad Johnson from the Cincinnati Bengals is lounging by a pool, Matt Hasselbeck of the Seattle Seahawks is on a fishing trip.
Simultaneously, Johnson, Hasselbeck and other players are affected by what appears to be an internal call to head back to training camp.
Dropping everything, the players flock to their teams. Coming together to make “V” formations, we see the New York Giants striding across the Brooklyn Bridge on their way to Giants Stadium, and the Dallas Cowboys trudging across the desert as they travel to Texas Stadium.
Given the visual nature of the spot, hiring Academy Award-winning cinematographer Kaminski (Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) was an absolute no-brainer.
“I fell in love with a spot that he did for Reebok [called “Cold Weather”] a few years back,” mcgarrybowen art director Andrew Conklin said. “It was shot in the middle of the summer, but somehow he captured the quintessential gloominess of Buffalo, this industrial town that doesn’t have a whole lot to offer but their football.”
Kaminski said he was flattered to have the agency and client ask him to work on the Reebok campaign again and that he liked the story that “Migration” aimed to tell.
“I also liked that they weren’t restrictive in terms of visuals–they were very open as long as we saw the product,” Kaminski shared.
Paying homage
Shooting on 35mm film, Kaminski sought to capture the juxtaposition of light and shadow as well as to infuse the spot with strong, graphic color.
“I would say it is a little bit of an homage to the commercials of the ’80s that I love, when Ridley Scott and the greatest guys were making commercials that were much more visually inspiring,” Kaminski related.
“I must say that most of the commercials I see on television [nowadays] have interesting stories but the visuals are really dull.”
With just three days to shoot “Migration,” Kaminski and the crew from Independent Media covered a lot of ground with locations ranging from the sand dunes of Pismo Beach in Southern California to New York City’s Brooklyn Bridge.
One has to ask what the football players were like to work with.
“They were very humble and cooperative,” Kaminski said. “When we shot Matt Hasselbeck, he was sick. I think he had a temperature and yet we were pumping water on his head. He had to stay there about three hours with the rain falling on his body, and it was obviously very demanding because he was sick, but he never complained.”
Cutting remarks Once Kaminski was finished putting the athletes through their paces, Akiko Iwakawa of New York’s Final Cut edited “Migration.”
She had plenty of footage to work with because Kaminski provided so much coverage, Segal said, noting, “The excess footage made it a lot of fun to cut as opposed to those spots where you shoot so fast that you only get what you boarded, and you can only edit it one way. Akiko had some room to play with here.”
Kaminski was most pleased with the final cut.
“You can deliver really great work, but if the agency is not sophisticated visually, they will not use the best parts, and frequently, you’ll end up with really bad takes–not in terms of performance but in terms of the visual storytelling. But these guys [from mcgarrybowen] were very sophisticated. They have really good aesthetics.”
When it came to music selection for the commercial, the goal was to find aural accompaniment that “was hypnotic and unconscious, as far away as you could get from the typical chest-beating score [used in sports ads],” Segal said.
In the end, “Train Song,” a tune recorded in the 1960s by a folk singer named Vashti Bunyan, was chosen.
Looking back on the job, Kaminski, who confessed that he isn’t into football or sports in general, noted that he was still quite glad to be a part of the team.
“Being on the Brooklyn Bridge with all of these famous athletes was just a treat,” Kaminski reflected.
