By Chuck Willis
WHEN I WAS LITTLE, THE Super Bowl had an entirely different meaning for me. I grew up around Green BayaPacker country. My parents were often invited to big Super Bowl parties. The grown-ups would shout and holler around the TV. Playing with the other kids, I would catch an occasional glimpse of a snowy football field, players with frozen breath. It looked like a war, a battlefield.
In the last few years, I have revisited that battlefield. Only now I am no longer an observer, Im a participant. Not a football player but an editor of commercials that appear on the Super Bowl. Back when I was in Green Bay, commercials were an opportunity to visit the buffet table and load up on olive loaf, liverwurst and Vienna sausages. It was a chance for the men to complain about a call or argue about which players were bums and which were destined for the Hall of Fame. Now people quiet down when the commercials start running. Suddenly, Dan the dentist is an authority on commercials. That was great. They had a better one last year. Not another talking animal! How about that Master Lock? If I find myself at a Super Bowl party, I am actually a celebrity. You worked on that? I am suddenly elevated above the stature of the winning quarterback.
The Super Bowl has grown to the equivalent of Oscar night. If the game is horrible, it can still be saved by the commercials. A great game only seems to elevate the quality of the spots. The newscasters that night all chuckle over their favorite commercials. The next morning thousands huddle around USA Today to read the viewers poll of the top 15 commercials. Its a hysteria. Being in the top five makes you as giddy as a runner-up for Miss USA.
Pageant. The feeling of garnering the #1 slot can only be compared to the elation displayed by James King of the World Cameron at last years Academy Awards.
Preparation for work on a Super Bowl spot is completely different from preparing for your everyday commercial. The very idea that your 30 or 60 seconds of work is probably going to be seen by more people than at any other time in its viewing history puts a whole new spin on it. The bar is raised, the table stakes go up, this is the whole enchilada.
The decks at Crew Cuts are cleared. For weeks prior to the dailies arriving, the staff is drilled over and over in preparation. Various mock battle situations are created. Recently, Crew Cuts purchased our own Super Bowl spot-preparation simulator, the SBSPS. Various Code Red conditions are recreated and rehearsed. The dailies have no time code. The Avid has crashed and the screening is in 10 minutes. The creative director has a brainstorm the night before and wants a re-cut. The sound effects are too prominent in the mix at the network integration. The account executive showed his wife last night and she has some suggestions. Simulated lunch and dinner orders are taken and retaken. If the lobster bisque goes where the Cuban black bean was supposed to go then its back to square one and we do it till we get it right.
By the time the first days dailies arrive at Crew Cuts, the staff has been honed to a precision instrument. The entire company works in unison, anticipating the clients every move.
The truth? Its a chance to take everything youve learned and experienced in your career and make it shine. The directors are the best, the concepts are sharp and funny, the execution is flawless. Everything is carefully considered. At the center of it all sits the editor. They really are the quarterbacks, pulling the footage together, working all the options, the different openings, the alternate endings, cutting in the re-shoot footage, providing the special effects house with a carefully laid-out rough cut.
Supervising the special effects. Working the sound design. Exploring the music options. Is it score? Or do we go with a popular song? Make the picture work to the lyrics. On top of it all, the editor is taking the maximum stress that is floating around and diffuses it. Reassures everyone. Guarantees that it will be great, it will get done in time. The quarterback marching the team downfield in a goal-to-goal drive.
When it is done, and you actually have enough energy left to watch the big game, you feel that being part of such a tremendous media event, and having the spot work just the way you had hoped, is a great big smile. Its probably one of the few times that editors come close to getting the recognition they deserve for the work they do. The day afterward, youre right back in the edit room working on one of those everyday spots, but youre that much better having played in the big show.
Damon Wayans and Damon Wayans Jr. Explore Generations, Old School vs. New School, In “Poppa’s House”
Boundaries between work and family don't just blur in the new CBS sitcom "Poppa's House" starring father-and-son comedy duo Damon Wayans and Damon Wayans Jr. They shatter.
"It's wonderful to come to work every day and see him and some of his kids and my sister and my brother and nieces and nephews. They all work on this show. They all contribute," says the senior Wayans. "I don't think there are words to express how joyful I am."
Wayans plays the titular Poppa, a curmudgeonly radio DJ who's more than comfortable doing it his way, while Wayans Jr. plays his son, Damon, a budding filmmaker who's stuck in a job he hates.
"My character, Pop, is just an old school guy who's kind of stuck in his ways," says Wayans, who starred in "In Living Color" and "My Wife and Kids."
Pop yearns for the days when a handshake was a binding contract and Michael Jordan didn't complain if he got fouled on the court. Pop laughs at the younger generation's participation trophies.
"It's old school versus new school and them teaching each other lessons from both sides," says Wayans Jr., who played Coach in the Fox sitcom "New Girl."
"They (the characters) bring the best out in each other and they're resistant initially. But then throughout the episode they have revelations and these revelations help them become better people," he adds.
The two have worked together before — dad made an appearance on son's "Happy Endings" and "Happy Together," while son was a writer and guest star on dad's "My Wife and Kids." But this is the first time they have headlined a series together.
The half-hour comedy — premiering Monday and co-starring Essence Atkins and Tetona Jackson — smartly leaves places in the script where father and son can let... Read More