From speed walking to scuba diving, a myriad of sports is portrayed in “Eye of the Squirter,” a comical new Canadian spot that has an average guy named Calvin participating in all sorts of athletic endeavors while singing a customized version of the Survivor anthem “Eye of the Tiger.” What’s particularly remarkable about the humorous spot is how easily Calvin manages to squirt MiO Sport flavored liquid beverage mix into a glass of water that he never puts down during his marathon of activity.
The :30 commercial was created by Taxi, Toronto, and directed by Benjamin Weinstein, who is represented in Canada by Toronto’s Steam Films (his stateside roost is Tool of North America). Weinstein has directed three spots in the MiO campaign, including “Changes,” which was set in an office and found Calvin and his co-workers undergoing bizarre physical transformations–Calvin, for example, turns into a tennis pro at one point, then an elderly woman–every time they squirted MiO into their water.
“MiO is all about unexpected change. That’s our jumping off point and our strategy,” explained Taxi creative director Jeff MacEarchern.
MiO Sport is a new iteration of the product, and Taxi tailored this latest spot in the campaign to appeal to people who like sports. That said, the spot isn’t intended to appeal to the serious athlete. “It’s not about the high school athlete that wants to make it to the major leagues,” MacEachern said. “It’s about the guy who wants to play softball with his friends.”
Weinstein and DP Tico Poulakakis shot “Eye of the Squirter” in just two days, so everything had to get done fast. To ensure that actor Dave Barclay, who has played Calvin in all of the MiO spots, wasn’t put under too much pressure, Weinstein called a meeting the night before the shoot, bringing together all of the department heads from production as well as effects and going through every single shot in detail. “We made sure everyone knew exactly what the expectations were for every shot just so there wouldn’t be any surprises on the shoot,” Weinstein said, noting, “There wasn’t any time for surprises.”
There also wasn’t time to move around from location to location, so “Eye of the Squirter” was shot at a community center in Scarborough, Ontario. “We needed a place that was going to give us a lot of different looks, and there happened to be this community center that was vast. It had a pool and a track and a football field, and production design certainly made the location feel bigger,” Weinstein remarked.
Coaches from various sports were brought in to work with Barclay during the shoot. “We actually brought a speed walking coach to come to the set to work with all three of them [the character of Calvin was flanked by two other actors in the speed walking scene] to make sure they had their technique right. But we didn’t want to overdo it so they’d look too perfect,” Weinstein said. “We wanted her to give them just enough information to do it in kind of a funny way.”
The Vanity
There were some things that Barclay couldn’t do, of course. A skilled practitioner of parkour was brought in to perform the leap off the dumpster, for example, and the artisans at Toronto visual effects shop The Vanity also pitched in, giving Calvin the physique of a bodybuilder, making it look like he was really zooming down the track on a luge (fans of MiO’s “Changes” will recognize Calvin’s luge partner from that earlier commercial) and cloning him for the synchronized swimming segment. The Vanity also added details like a shark and fish to the scuba scene.
The Vanity VFX supervisor Sean Cochrane was on location to lend his expertise, and it made a difference to have an experienced employee of The Vanity present, according to the director. “If you have a freelance effects supervisor, there will be a tendency to be really safe. Sean had the ability to be judicious,” Weinstein said, noting that was crucial for a production that was up against it in terms of time limitations.
Griff Henderson of Toronto’s PosterBoy Edit edited “Eye of the Squirter.” Henderson was on location, too, cutting as the spot was being shot. Both Weinstein and MacEachern noted it was also advantageous to have the editor on site. “He wasn’t cramming, trying to get a sense of the footage as it was coming in,” MacEachern said.
Originally, the plan was for the spot to open with the football scene, but Henderson came up with the idea of beginning with the speed walking, and everyone agreed that it provided a funnier, more dramatic start to the spot, MacEachern shared.
The “Eye of the Squirter” track was recorded at Eggplant Collective in Toronto, and rather than hire a professional singer, the agency allowed Barclay to play rock star. “We’d never heard him sing before, but we loved the idea of the authenticity, and he was up for the challenge, knowing that if he was really bad or couldn’t sing, or they just couldn’t save him, we could always use a backup voice,” MacEachern said. “But he was killer. He nailed it, and Eggplant made it seem like he was a pro.”
