It looks like a giant tennis ball, only shaggier. Perhaps it’s just your average overgrown hairball, four feet tall with leathery feet. One thing’s for certain, it probably knows more about sports than John Madden. No, it’s not your kid brother. It’s Knowledge, a character created by Marina del Rey, Calif.-based Ground Zero for its new ESPN2 2Night campaign, "Knowledge," that broke last December. The campaign is a series of six spots ("Big," "Bar," "Beach," "Friends," "Fear" and "Missed") directed by Dante Ariola of bicoastal/international Propaganda Films, and it’s only one of the most recent notches in the belt of Ground Zero senior producer Corey Bartha.
According to Bartha, " "Knowledge’ was a big departure from previous ESPN ads. The key was to convince them to go with the idea." The spots feature a typical ESPN2 viewer as spectator sportsman-in other words, a phlegmatic couch potato, forever glued to the TV. Meanwhile, in another room, like a pet dog, his Knowledge waits. "I watch RPM 2Night for my… Knowledge," croaks the sunlight-deprived sports fanatic. We are told that with each ESPN2 show the viewer watches, his Knowledge grows. "Some day I will share my Knowledge with the world," the narrator says in "Big," peeking out of an elevator door, his furry ball of Knowledge standing by his side. The music swells ominously, the fluorescent lights flicker. "That will be a fun day."
Bartha credits Ground Zero’s art director Guy Shelmerdine for coming up with the idea of the Knowledge character as a simple fuzzball. According to Propaganda’s producer Greg Cundiff, Dante Ariola originally proposed making Knowledge an elaborate, glowing CGI character, but the Ground Zero creatives stood their ground: " "We’ll go with the hairball,’ " Cundiff recalls the agency deciding. Bartha explains that the Knowledge character is played by "a height-impaired woman."
"She came from a casting agency which casts little people," says Bartha. "The costume she wore was designed by Michael Burnett Productions [Sun Valley, Calif]. It has a bunch of air bladders and plastic slides that move around and make it seem like it’s breathing."
Copywriter Grant Holland is credited with penning the sport fanatic’s deadpan voiceover and planner David Hattenbach was responsible for researching the project by observing real-life ESPN2 fans in their natural habitats: their living rooms. Bartha and his team chose Ariola to direct. "Lots of my spots have a sort of quirky pseudo-documentary feel," Bartha notes. "This series needed a certain stylized look, and Dante is one of the most talented directors out there. He’s a real visionary. He spends a lot of time thinking about how to make each shot the best, even shots that some directors would consider unimportant throwaways."
The "Knowledge" spots were shot over the course of two days in a seedy downtown L.A. hotel. In "Missed," the sports fanatic forgets to watch the opening of NFL 2Night, thereby taking his Knowledge for granted. The sad, neglected furball leaves home and wanders down a back alley. "During the outdoor scene we were all huddled in a little video village on one end of the alley," Bartha recalls. "There were rats the size of cats running around."
Back Story
After graduating in 1993 from Washington State University, Pullman, Wash., with a B.A. in communications, Bartha worked as a production assistant on commercials for companies such as Five Union Square Productions, New York, and Plum Productions, Santa Monica. During the next three years he moved through crew departments, working grip and electric, and then he crossed back over into production as a coordinator. By chance he caught a segment about Ground Zero on the Bravo Network’s Media Television. "They looked like they had a cool atmosphere, so I called them up and they said they’d hook me up with an unpaid internship," remembers Bartha. "I got into the groove of things and my internship turned into a job after two months." Patricia Phelan, Ground Zero’s head of production, tutored him in the ways of agency production. "She was great," says Bartha. "She helped fill in the gaps about advertising, like finding ways to make things happen for clients. Like with ESPN2, they needed a lot for a little money. She taught me ways to work deals and get things done."
For example: When ESPN2 urgently needed spots to introduce its about-to-debut 2Night shows, Bartha pulled bicoastal Hungry Man director Hank Perlman and his crew off another Ground Zero project to put a campaign together. "They stuck around an extra day to shoot four spots," says Bartha. "We did it at [Ground Zero creative director] Kirk Souder’s house for very little money." Those spots feature four guys in various situations-standing around a spent beer keg, hanging in the pool-dead silent. "Now guys have something to talk about," the screen reads. That campaign broke last August, a full four months before "Knowledge."
Bartha, who has been at Ground Zero for three years, credits much of the success of his spots to working with good directors. With bicoastal Moxie Pictures, Bartha and Ground Zero’s Phelan produced director Todd Phillips’ Virgin Cola soapbox campaign, which broke last July. The Virgin campaign featured a mix of real people and celebrity spokespersons, including old-school rappers Run DMC, funkmaster musician George Clinton, and many others.
Bartha was especially excited to work with director Christopher Guest, whom he regards as a "a comic genius." Guest’s "The Rick" campaign for ESPN.com, also through Moxie Pictures, broke last November, and features another sports fanatic. This time the oddball is an Internet-bound former high school football player who proudly calls himself "The Rick." He discusses online memorabilia trading and shows off his collection of loot, including a piece of the canvas from the "Rumble in the Jungle" Muhammad Ali-George Foreman boxing match and a chili dog-stained tie once worn by legendary football coach Hank Stram. "I’m a huge sports fan myself, although I identify more with The Rick than the Knowledge guy," Bartha chuckles. "But they’re both totally off-the-deep-end, die-hard sports fans."
As for the future, Bartha hopes to help Ground Zero create a satellite production company. "There are a lot of really creative guys here who should be making movies. Someone’s always writing something," he says. He eventually wants to establish himself as an executive producer of documentaries. "I’m really into unconventional sports," says Bartha, "and documentaries would let me get out in the funky country. I’d like to do something on surfing in Indonesia." He hopes his first pro-ject, however, will be on smokejumpers, parachuting firefighters who battle blazes in northern Washington state and Oregon. "I’d like to get the chance to do what they do. Besides, it has all the prerequisites of interesting television viewing: danger from an armchair."q
