While the Green Bay Packers won Super Bowl XLV, Deutsch LA and director/DP Lance Acord of bicoastal Park Pictures scored arguably the best spot of the game with Volkswagen’s “The Force.” The :30 finds a young boy dressed in a Darth Vader costume trying with all his might to use the force–that special power we all know from the Star Wars films–to manipulate inanimate objects. According to a Nielsen survey, “The Force” was the best-liked spot of Super Bowl XLV.
Deutsch EVP/group creative director/copywriter Eric Springer credits senior copywriter David Povill and art director Craig Melchiano with presenting the concept that eventually became “The Force.” “Everybody immediately gravitated toward it,” Springer recalled, noting that the aim was to promote remote start–which will be a feature of the Volkswagen Passat when it goes on sale in September–in a fun, memorable way. (We’ll see a series of commercials promoting the car’s other features over the coming months.)
Deutsch had to get permission from George Lucas’ Lucasfilm Ltd. to use Darth Vader in the commercial, of course, and not only did Lucasfilm say yes, the company also asked if the agency wanted to use music from the film as well, according to Springer.
Being able to use Darth Vader’s theme “The Imperial March” was a real gift, but it also made the edit more complex for editor Jim Haygood of Santa Monica’s Union, who cut “The Force” into a 1:01 version for pre-Super Bowl Internet distribution and a :30 for the game itself. “The music was scored so long ago–in the mid ’70s–we didn’t have any splits, so we had to keep re-cutting the spot to the music as we lost frames,” Springer explained. (Jeff Elmassian of Santa Monica Endless Noise arranged the music for “The Force,” and he did the sound design.)
Acord, who still remembers the car ride home from seeing Star Wars when he was a kid, shot “The Force” in and around a house in the Los Angeles area. He purposely found a home with shiny black floors and bare white walls, a look harkening back to spaceship interiors from the Star Wars saga.
The director/DP also cast some inanimate objects that would plausibly represent characters from Star Wars in a child’s imagination–the washer and dryer are stand-ins for the Imperial Stormtroopers, while the exercise machine resembles those walkers with the long mechanical legs.
Director’s misdirect
“One idea I felt strongly about and the agency loved was in the first shot or two establishing a misdirect for the audience in terms of the scale of the kid and the world you were in,” Acord shared. As you’ll recall from the initial moments of the spot, we see Darth Vader shot from behind and from a low angle as he strides down a hallway accompanied by “The Imperial March.” It’s a few seconds into the spot before you realize it is a little boy dressed up as Darth Vader, striding about a house.
By now, you likely know Max Page is behind the mask. The six-year-old actor, whose credits include The Young and the Restless, went on a post-Super Bowl interview spree, appearing on shows ranging from Today to Access Hollywood.
Page, who actually looks like a young Mark Hamill, won the role over dozens of boys and girls who tried out, but there were two little Darth Vaders on location “because we didn’t know if one of them was going to overheat or not want to do it or not be able to act it out,” Springer said, “and unfortunately for the other little Darth, he never got a chance because Max just stepped up and owned it.”
FYI: Springer said he was unaware that Page had a pacemaker (his mother Jennifer has revealed in interviews that her son was born with a heart defect) and only found out when his mom casually mentioned during the shoot that he had an appointment at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. “You would never know,” Springer said of Page’s condition.
Force fed
During the two-day shoot, Acord fed his young talent, outfitted in an off-the-shelf Darth Vader helmet from Target, suggestions on how to exert the force.
“It was fun with Max. He’s an amazing little kid,” Acord praised. “He really has the ability to concentrate and stay with it much longer than a kid his age normally would.”
As you can see in a bloopers and outtakes video released on YouTube, Acord had a little fun with his pint-size Darth Vader during the shoot.
“We rigged the doll on the bed with fishing line and a fishing pole, and Max didn’t realize it, and we lifted it up and off the bed while he was applying the force to it,” Acord said. “It was very, very funny. Max really got into that.”
One of the best moments in the commercial–little Darth Vader’s surprised and startled reaction to the car starting after he applied the force–wasn’t planned.
“The original expectation was that the car would start, and he would react in a somewhat heroic way, posturing himself like he’d finally done it,” Lance said, “and the response and the reaction [on set when we shot the cart-starting sequence] was one of surprise, alarm and disbelief. ‘Oh my God! What have I done? It actually worked!’ We turned a more interesting corner at that moment.”
