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 cutaNike’s "The Morning After," directed by Jonze of Satellite for Wieden+ Kennedy, Portland, Ore.arecently 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."
