The best thing that’s happened to me over the years is that I’m no longer seen as just the car guy. Now, my range is what it used to be in Europe," says director Allan Van Rijn of bicoastal RSA USA. In ’93, Van Rijn helmed "Spikes" (through BFCS’s now defunct Los Angeles office), a much-touted Lexus spot via Team One Advertising, El Segundo, Calif. "Suddenly I was the king of sheet metal. I was cornered. They thought, ‘Ah, this is the new car guy.’ I shot car after car after car," he recalls.
"In Europe, I hardly shot any cars. I was doing storytelling, fashion, children, babies, dogs—you name it," says Van Rijn of the assignments he did prior to moving to the U.S. nine years ago. After "Spikes," Van Rijn, who signed with RSA USA in ’96, was deluged with car assignments for a few years, but the ideas kept getting weaker and weaker: "Any excuse to fill thirty seconds with metal to metal."
The director needed to recharge. One day, rather than doing yet another big-budget auto job, he took a $75,000 PSA called "No Laws" via Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore., which promoted charitable giving. Van Rijn said he enjoyed the experience and that it marked the beginning of a new phase in his career. After that, he went back to directing a wide variety of ads for clients such as Visa and Nike.
New Horizon
Van Rijn decided to once again add automotive work to his spotmaking schedule a couple of years ago, "because car commercials have become much more idea-oriented," he explains. "They have become more image-driven. Look at the BMW and the Volkswagen campaigns. You can do a lot more with cars. It became very fashionable to use [directors] who hadn’t shot cars before, like fashion directors. And because I hadn’t shot cars in a long time, suddenly I was rediscovered."
A pair of recent Dodge Neon spots, "Bridge" and "Lover’s Lane" via BBDO Detroit, demonstrate that the director still has a flair for auto ads. The two :30s beautifully illustrate the pun-driven scripts in Dodge’s "Different" campaign. In "Bridge," a Dodge Neon drives onto the middle of a suspension bridge. A voiceover listing the car’s features accompanies exquisite images of the huge structure breaking apart and collapsing, as the Neon apparently weighs it down. Then comes the punchline: "and tons of other stuff."
Similarly, in "Lover’s Lane," a Neon pulls into a secluded spot on a hillside with great nighttime panoramas—the perfect place to take a paramour. The car begins to slowly sink into the ground, uprooting nearby trees. After describing the car’s attributes, the narrator deadpans,
