Spike Jonze of bicoastal Satellite; Tim Burton, who helms ads out of A Band Apart. 35mm, Los Angeles; David Fincher of bicoastal Anonymous; Errol Morris of bicoastal/international @radical.media; and feature filmmaker Gus Van Sant are directors known for their highly personal styles. They also share at least one common bond on certain projects: the editing skills of Angus Wall of Rock Paper Scissors, Los Angeles.
One ad that Wall cut—Nike’s "The Morning After," directed by Jonze of Satellite for Wieden+ Kennedy, Portland, Ore.—recently won the fourth annual primetime Emmy Award for best commercial. The spot’s darkly humorous Y2K scenario plays like an apocalyptic comedy. The :60 opens with close-ups of party debris from a millennial celebration and the sound of an alarm clock going off. As a moldy instrumental rendition of "Auld Lang Syne" plays, a man wakes up in this morning-after mess and grabs some aspirin. The next shot shows the same guy, now wearing a running outfit, standing on the street and stretching his limbs. It’s clear that things are amiss when an armored military vehicle passes the man, who is completely oblivious to it.
He jogs past a convenience store whose sprinkler and electrical systems have gone haywire. He also fails to notice a crowd of people scrambling for money being freely dispensed from an out-of-whack ATM machine. He travels on, untroubled by a chaotic traffic jam, hordes of people frantically charging through the streets, a scene of riot police in action and a precariously close explosion. The Y2K jogger takes a rest as a squadron of helicopters flies overhead and a city burns in the distance. Nothing catches his eye. He resumes his exercise and spies a missile soaring through the sky, but the deadly weapon doesn’t seem to register. The intrepid runner coolly continues to move through the chaos. Another jogger, headed in the opposite direction, approaches as we see a giraffe darting through the background. Neither runner appears to notice the animal or anything else. Unperturbed, the men exchange greetings as they pass each other. The spot ends on an almost sweet note: a long shot of the runners on their merry ways as the giraffe stands in the foreground. Nike’s logo and tag, "Just Do It," discreetly fades in over the image.
When asked to talk about working on the award-winning spot, an unassuming Wall simply responds, "The job went really well. Everybody was in concert with what they wanted, which made my job easy. Most of the hard decisions had already happened."
"When you get to work with Spike Jonze and Wieden+Kennedy at the same time, it’s about as good as it gets," notes Linda Carlson, executive producer at Rock Paper Scissors. "Angus works a lot with Wieden+Kennedy. He has a great relationship with Spike and Vince [Landay], his producer. When you put together groups of people who all know each other, you’re pretty comfortable about what you’re going to get from everybody."
Just Do It
Wall recently wrapped up a two-month job cutting eight Nike spots directed by David Fincher of Anonymous via W+K, and another Nike spot, "Elephant," directed by Dante Ariola of bicoastal/international Propaganda Films, also out of W+K. The eight Fincher-helmed commercials feature Olympic athletes, including Michael Johnson ("Invincible"), Marion Jones ("Believe") and Maurice Greene ("Strength").
"Invincible" shows a pair of filmstrips containing footage of Johnson getting into position for a race, looking over at an opponent, taking off and running. Sharp and soft focus images are contrasted throughout the spot, with different images of Johnson coming in and out of focus. The strips elegantly spin and slide horizontally across a white background. A female voice, backed by a spare, edgy soundtrack, poetically intones, "Athletes greet one another without words. They stand on the line, every inch of their bodies projecting cool determination. Without making a sound, they scream, ‘I am invincible.’ "
Wall says that working on "Invincible" was "a really enjoyable job, because it was doing something that was completely new and different. Taking images and making them move as if you had these film strips floating in space [allowed] for thinking about imagery in a different way."
Does Wall usually get a chance to spend time with a spot’s footage before agency creatives get involved in the editing process? "It depends on how comfortable they are," he replies. "Sometimes I will work with them the whole way through. Sometimes people have lived with an idea for a long time and they just want to see what somebody’s going to do with it. I always like to have people come in a lot so that we don’t waste time doing something that people don’t want."
Wall got his start editing commercials when he worked in the film vault at the Los Angeles office of Propaganda. "One of my duties was building directors’ reels," he explains. "At that time, all of the directors there did music videos, and the company wanted to get into commercials. One of the reasons I had to learn how to edit was in order to put videos together without [creating] big glitches in between them, believe it or not.
"Being in the vault was my film school," he continues. "I saw everything that came in or went out. I got a crash course in film." Wall went on to edit music videos both for Propaganda and as a freelancer.
The editor broke into commercials when Fincher, then with Propaganda, called on him to cut ads for Nike’s "Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood" campaign, out of W+K. Fincher went to Wall when the project’s original editor suddenly had to leave his post due to a family emergency. "David asked me to fill in," relates Wall. "It was a huge gamble on his part to give me the opportunity. It was a real gift."
In 1992, Wall formed his own company, Rock Paper Scissors. He is currently at work on two Sony PlayStation spots directed by Erick Ifergan of Serial Dreamer, West Hollywood, Calif., via TBWA/Chiat/ Day, San Francisco.
Carlson points out something that she feels is special about Wall and Rock Paper Scissors: "One of the most unique things about Angus and this company is its really long-term relationships with the agencies and the directors that we work with," she says. "It’s like a family." With Jonze, Burton, Wall, et al., as members, it’s a very talented social unit as well. a
