Steve Colby, director/DP with Atlanta-based Means Street Productions, is no golfer. Nevertheless, J. Walter Thompson of Atlanta had him in mind when they created storyboards for As Good As It Gets, a national spot for Slazenger golf balls. The agency wanted Colby not only because he makes commercials look oil-painting pretty, but he also knows how to direct under extreme conditions. Colby expertly handled an August 97 Entergy Power shoot out of JWT for the spot Company Car on the mucky, buggy Louisiana bayou, where unstable airboats were used as platforms, and water snakes and gators slunk around the weed-choked waterways. This time around, the agency needed someone to shoot on the rocky coast of Ireland on a golf course in the middle of winter.
It was very, very cold, Colby says of the January shoot. The wind was blowing 30, 50 miles per hour nearly every day. There were tumultuous skies, fog and rain and mist. It was, he adds with awe, beautiful.
Slazenger wanted to shoot where the sport began, both to showcase its rich heritage and to whet the appetites of winter-weary golfers. As Good As It Gets, budgeted at some $500,000, features golfers on rolling fairways sandwiched in by jagged cliffs, a rumbling sea and wind-tossed bulrushes. On one particular green, the pin is bent over in the tempest like a fishing pole straining with a catch on the other end. Set to a lush, Celtic soundtrack from Santa Monica-based Admusic, the spot evokes both the grandeur of the game and the land from which it was carved.
Michael Lollis, JWT Atlantas executive VP/creative director, says, Steve is exceptionally talented. Hes passionate about his work, and this shoot was one of the greatest weve been on. We also felt we could get more for our dollar going with a local company.
Colby competes regularly for national work, and has directed for clients including BellSouth, the Special Olympics and Huntington Bank.
The job took approximately two-and-a-half weeks: a week-and-a-half for scouting and five days to shoot. (The short winter days meant they could only shoot from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) Ten courses were scouted, and two, Ballybunion and Tralee, were chosen. Lollis love of golf, says Colby, was a huge help. I could look at [a hole] and say its challenging, but he knew which holes a golfer would appreciate.
Some 30 crew members were on hand in Ireland, and Colby credits a collaborative spirit with helping the difficult shoot go well. He also credits Richard Sampson, a freelance producer who works frequently with Means Street, for doing an incredible job.
All I had to do was think about the pictures, not the minutiae, says Colby. The team included U.K. production manager, Veronica Lowes, whom Means Street executive producer and co-owner Sarah Burmeister has known for years (Lowes hired the local Irish crew), and production coordinator Spice Griffith. The golfers were local police officers, one of whom holds a course record at Ballybunion.
In The Outback
As Good As It Gets was edited by Steve Cox, president of Outback Editorial in Atlanta, a busy, four-year-old, three-editor company, which typically cuts spots produced in the southeastern U.S. The exposed film was sent back to Atlanta to the Film Group for processing (leaving the crew without dailies), and this gave Cox some room to play. I had a good two, three days to mess around and come up with a longer version, about 65, 70 seconds, to bring down to :30, he explains. When the agency came in, it was in dramatic form, and gave everybody a sense of the grandeur of the footage.
Cox wanted a basic story. I started by building some interest, mystique, says Cox, and trying to draw the viewer in with some of the more surreal shots so it would grab their attention. There are so many dramatic shots; it was a matter of trying to build it into a progression that came to a crescendo right in the middle of the spot, where the [voiceover] talks about this is where the game began.
The initial select reel was so powerful, according to Lollis, that the client was persuaded to create both a :60 and a :30.
The beauty of the location and the history of the game were not lost on the non-golfing director. We were at a par 3, with an ocean of grass on the bottom right-hand side, pin in the distance, ocean on the left, Colby recalls, and I said AIm going to hit a golf ball, what the hell. I teed up the ball and the entire crew and all the golfers Id bossed around for five days, the caddys that had seen everything there is to see, are watching, and Im over the ball saying AI cant believe Im doing this. I hit the ballaand it lands five feet from the pin!
Beginners luck? When Colby got back to Atlanta, he played with Bill Pauls, JWT partner and associate creative director on the spot. Colby shot a 120. Lucky for him, hes a gifted director.v
