Director Steve Chase is a life-long hockey fan. So when a long-time friend, former veteran National Hockey League (NHL) player Steve Duchesne, expressed interest in a possible ad campaign for the Allen Americans, a minor league hockey team in which he is part owner, Chase put his hat in the rink.
It didn’t matter to the helmer that the work had to be on a shoestring budget. Chase saw the project as an opportunity to reflect the competitive soul and spirit of the game with great comedic effect.
Chase started by conceptualizing a poster campaign based on the iconic image of a hockey player smiling with several front teeth missing. Chase got headshots of the mayor of Allen, Texas (a suburb of Dallas), and local business owners. Each photograph was then digitally manipulated to remove several front teeth.
“You go the local dry cleaner, take the owner’s picture, take out his teeth via Photoshop and give him a poster with his face on it and the caption, ‘Smile if you love hockey,'” said Chase. “Suddenly we had shops all over town with these personalized posters promoting the team.”
The posters wound up serving as a springboard for six commercials which Chase created and directed.
Earning inclusion into this week’s “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery is “Good Break,” which opens on a locker room where a doctor looks at an x-ray in disbelief.
We too can see the x-ray which shows a broken forearm. The x-ray is difficult and painful to watch as the forearm is inverted into a bizarre contortion. The x-ray almost looks like an optical illusion.
Next we see the player and his strangely twisted wing. The doctor asks him if his arm hurts.
Amazingly the player says no and is given medical clearance to get back on the ice. He heads out of the locker room, hockey stick being carried by his good arm.
Interim assignment Chase took on the campaign while he was in-between production company affiliations, having left Rhythm+Hues Commercial Studios and before recently coming aboard his new roost, Oil Factory, which provided some production resources and support to the Allen Americans spots that he independently created and directed.
Though the commercials haven’t formally aired yet (they are scheduled to run locally, perhaps when and if the NHL lockout ends), online exposure has already generated buzz among devout ice hockey fans extending all the way to Canada and beyond. Indeed the offbeat ads have generated a cult following.
Most of the commercials feature actual players from the Allen Americans team in locker/training room scenarios, including a goalie who takes his lucky horseshoe seriously–and internally–and another player who does some makeshift patch-up stitching of a nasty facial gash so he can get back in the game faster than having to wait for the doctor.
Other spots in the campaign depict fans at a local diner; their love for hockey is evident in their celebratory smiles and the way in which they consume a meal, including their beverage of choice. It’s almost as if the two guys at a dining counter are seated in a game penalty box.
As for the casting of team players, Chase explained, “Steve [Duchesne] told me, ‘We can’t afford television.’ That got me to thinking about how we could save money. Why not use the players, use their uniforms, shoot in the team locker room?”
The only actors in the commercials were the doctor and in the diner both the short order cook and the waitress–the only three characters who weren’t hockey players.”
As for his love for hockey, Chase related, “I grew up in Montreal where hockey is a religion. It became a religion for me back when I was a kid. The sport is tough. In basketball if there’s a little blood, the player is out of the game immediately. Football is tougher but they play just 16 regular season games. In hockey they play a hundred games and they always play injured, including exhibition season and the playofffs if they make it. If you get cut in the game, the doctor sews you up quick and you keep playing. Sometimes there’s no doctor involved, only the trainer.
“We felt,” continued Chase, “that by showing the true spirit of hockey, we could get people all over Allen excited about the sport and who plays the game.”
Best Work pedigree Chase is no stranger to having his work included in our “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery.
In years past he has helmed comedy commercials for the Canadian market–Tylenol’s “Pistachio,” Cadbury Caramilk’s “Eat Fast,” and Dentyne’s “Frozen Head”–that each went on to earn “The Best Work You May Never See” distinction.
