After lensing four commercials back to back, DP Neil Shapiro could use a day off. "I’m absolutely beat," he says. "This is probably the busiest I’ve ever been."
His hard work has paid off. Shapiro, a 13-year industry veteran, is getting plenty of attention these days for "Submarine," a :60 for Budweiser out of DDB Chicago, that he lensed for director David McNally of bicoastal Omaha Pictures. Both dramatic and funny, "Submarine" has more tension and authenticity than many feature-length Hollywood films, and recently earned Top Spot recognition (SHOOT, 4/14). In the ad, a submarine crew spots an enemy destroyer and dives below the surface. Aware that the enemy is using sonar radar, the captain asks for quiet. The calm is broken when a bottle of Bud begins to slide off a table. A sailor grabs the bottle at the last possible second, and stops it from falling to the floor, averting disasterabut only temporarily. Unable to resist, the sailor opens the twist top, a noise that gives away the sub’s location. There is a ferocious explosion off-camera, and the scene then cuts to the crew in a life raftaalong with two bobbing cases of Budweiser.
"It was hard," Shapiro says of shooting inside the tiny prop-house sub. "I’m six-feet, three inches. I must have banged my head forty times. I’m also a little claustrophobic."
The greatest challenge for Shapiro was lighting the shadow-filled sub. "The lighting was really tricky," he says. "We hid kino-flos behind things, taped them up, tucked them away here and there, and managed to actually get some light on people’s faces. It was kind of a good experience, actually. I liked the challenge."
