It’s like working at a school for gifted children," raves senior producer Jan O’Malley about San Francisco-based agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, where, to hear her tell it, even the mail guy is "incredibly funny and gifted." And being surrounded by such cleverness keeps everyone on their toes. "It really lights a fire under your butt," O’Malley laughs.
For evidence of the creative fire burning under O’Malley’s behind, look no further than the five-spot Nike Alpha campaign, produced through bicoastal/ international Propaganda Films, which broke in late December. The spots feature digital effects, real car crashes, a monkey, a goat and "special guest stars," including the Seattle SuperSonics’ Gary Payton.
Much of the spot action centers around a shop, "Patell’s Oddities." The shop is part Blade Runner-esque thrift store, part mad scientist’s laboratory. Its cobwebbed shelves are stocked with green goo in jars, magic dust, and, of course, Nike Alpha products.
In "Court Elves," Payton asks about the contents of a beaker in Patell’s shop. Patell sprinkles the dust on Payton’s feet. Suddenly, green elves appear under his feet and carry Payton around the store. "How long does this last?" Payton asks. The elves then explode into phosphorescent muck. Payton decides to go with some Nike Air Zoom GP basketball shoes instead of the elves. "Those will work," says Patell.
"Snow Dome" features a woman going out for a jog on a fine, sunny day in San Francisco. As she runs through the city, it begins to snow. Cars crash around her, the objects of the world slide past, everything slipping into anarchy. The camera pulls back to reveal that her world is a snow globe that Payton is shaking, as the woman hits a transparent barrier.
To create the computer graphics, O’Malley says she needed "a big, powerful company to crank it out." They chose Venice, Calif.-based Digital Domain, which created the Budweiser Lizards and won an Oscar for their work on Titanic. "They did the compositing of the court elves, made the fairy dust, the snow over the Golden Gate Bridge … everything."
The agency chose Michael Bay to direct. "We thought he’d be terrific at the bigness of it all," O’Malley says of the Armageddon director. "We wanted something cinematic. Michael is very focused on the look of everything." Patell’s Oddities shop was originally envisioned as "a tiny, cute, East Village kind of place," according to O’Malley. "But Michael put his own vision on it. It looked magical and real."
Sally Hotchkiss, a freelance producer, was called in to work with O’Malley. "We stayed together on [Alpha Project spots] "Johnny" and "Court Elves," O’Malley says. "She went off to edit and I worked on the other three spots. This is the only time I remember working in tandem with another producer. It can be a little awkward. But at the time we thought that the spots needed to be done by mid-December, and there’s no way we would have done it without a freelancer."
Roots
O’Malley graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1981 with a B.A. in art and art history. Her first job was in 1983 at Grey Advertising, San Francisco. "Those were the dark days of cutting and pasting," she laughs. She moved into the broadcasting side of the agency not long after, acting as an assistant producer. O’Malley insists that she never made a conscious decision to become a producer. "Once you’re in production, it just seems that producing is the way you go," she says. "It was a way of doing something creative. With my degree, there was very little you could do. And advertising was a way to be creative and be around creative people."
From 1985 to ’94, O’Malley worked at J. Walter Thompson, San Francisco, primarily with clients Sprint and Chevron Public Affairs. "I did this awful stint on Jenny Craig," she remembers. "I mean, it was sad. We were doing testimonials, and on every shoot people cried. They would cry. We would cry. But we tried to take it for what it was."
After doing some freelancing for Goodby, Silverstein, with such clients as Sega, PacBell and Budweiser, she was brought on staff in 1996. Since then she’s produced stand-out work such as Nike’s "A Championship Season" campaign, which broke in January ’98 and ran through March of that year, directed by then-Propaganda Films’ Anthony Hoffman, who is now at bicoastal/international radical.media. The nine-spot campaign features a fictitious wo-men’s basketball team experiencing wins, losses, and life on the road. "That was a sweet campaign," O’Malley says. "It was very close to our hearts. And it really touched a nerve with girls. Something like that hadn’t seen the light of day [before]."
Another job close to O’Malley’s heart is the Southwestern Bell campaign, which broke in May 1997, directed by Peter Care of bicoastal/international Satellite. "They’re Coming" features members of a New York company learning how to "fit in" in Texas, through such techniques as wearing giant cowboy hats and adopting phony southern accents. "Can you drink the water in Texas?" one New York "Texan" nervously asks. "We just kinda winged it," says O’Malley, who credits Goodby senior copywriter Paul Venables with the spots’ quirky sense of humor, as well as the acting of the fine ensemble, including lead cowboy Jim Connors and actor Johnny "Roastbeef" Williams.q
