On a recent Saturday morning, as the pounding rains left over from Hurricane Ivan beat down on the streets of Brooklyn, N.Y., a DP looked out the front door of his brownstone, wondering how a series of exterior lights could be rigged in the downpour. A decision was made to delay the set-up until the rains let up, pushing back the start of the shoot for three Bacardi ads.
Once the rains cleared, lights were assembled, and the shoot for the first spot, "Father/Son," finally began. As the actors took their places in the brownstone’s well-appointed living room, DP Tony Burns and his first assistant cameraman, Tony Ponti, made some last minute lens and camera adjustments. Screens over the windows needed to be moved to compensate for the wind.
These Bacardi spots don’t represent a liquor company’s efforts to get the word out about the brand. Burns and director David Brooks were shooting the package as spec spots—in the hopes that they will lead to more commercialwork. The pair is also shooting two other spec ads, one for Evian, the other a public service announcement promoting safe sex.
Breaking into the commercial directing business is by no means an easy feat. Like many professions, almost no one will consider you for the job unless you have something to back up your skills. In the case of directors, it’s all about the reel. But if you can’t get a paying gig, how are you going to prove that you’re the next Noam Murro or Baker Smith? One way is to craft a series of spec spots, which will demonstrate to production companies and agencies that you understand the :30 and :60 formats.
That’s exactly the approach Brooks, who has directed short films and music videos, as well as a few spots, is taking with the Bacardi package. While Brooks and Burns have done a smattering of spotwork, both view these spec pieces as a way to show that they are looking to more meaningfully diversify into the ad world. To get an insider’s view of how a spec spot takes shape, SHOOT followed the process from initial creative meetings to pre-production, the shoot and the edit.
One of the first questions to come up is: Why do spec spots? After all, they’re time consuming, expensive, logistically challenging and involve calling in pretty much every favor a director, DP or producer might have.
The benefits of doing a spec spot for Brooks are very straightforward. "[They provide the chance] to do something that is not already on my reel," he says. He is looking for a production company with strong executive producers and sales reps with "whom I can develop a long, enduring relationship."
Brooks is developing feature projects as well. He has helmed a short film called Member, featuring Josh Hartnett, which was an official selection at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, and currently has a development deal with FOX Searchlight Pictures, where he is working on an adaptation of the TC Boyle novel Budding Prospects, and a psychological thriller from an original screenplay that will also feature Hartnett. Member centers on a depressed teen driving through the night in Los Angeles, working up the nerve to take his own life but in a way that looks like a car accident.
So, one might ask Brooks, why not use the short on your reel? "The short film is a fifteen minute monologue, riddled with teenage angst, embellished with complex visuals," he answers. "These elements have attracted attention from the music video and feature film worlds, but they do not immediately translate into interest from the advertising business. Certainly, when I extract forty-second bites from the film, a creative team can begin to see what I can do with spotwork, but nothing really beats seeing a finished thirty-second comedy/dialogue piece to understand where I’m coming from, and what I’d do with [an agency’s] script."
"It’s common knowledge that agencies tend to pigeonhole directors and DPs," adds Burns. "I think a striking spec spot showcases what you would like to do rather than what you have done."
Burns looks forward to working on more spots, citing his desire to grow as a DP. "What’s not to like about working on commercials? If you think about it, not even the biggest Hollywood movie can match the budget and resources applied to thirty seconds of onscreen spot footage," he points out. "Unlike a movie, we do not have a captive audience. There is no character development or backstory. Simply put, [advertisers] have a few seconds to grab the viewer’s attention and convey a message. This elevates the importance of the DP. My goal is to develop a style that incorporates the originality and punch that is typical of U.K. spots, but adds the visual sophistication and production values inherent in U.S. production."
THE BACKSTORY
Brooks and Burns, who largely funded the spec spots, initially met when the director was helming a Sundance promo for New York agency Powell; Burns served as DP on the project. The shop recently engineered the re-launch of Rheingold Beer, and Burns and Jenni Katz served as producers on those spots. Katz was the one who initially urged Burns and Brooks to take on some spec spots. She introduced the pair to Jason Graff, a friend and former colleague who works as a VP/senior copywriter at Saatchi & Saatchi, New York.
In 2003, Saatchi & Saatchi pitched the Bacardi business. Graff developed three scripts—"Date," "Father/Son" and "Slap," largely branding efforts for Bacardi’s flagship rum. The concepts, which didn’t cover Bacardi Limon and Bacardi Silver, didn’t fit into the pitch, and were never presented to the spirits company. The account went to agency davidandgoliath, Los Angeles, and the scripts languished.
Until one day Katz contacted Graff, and sent Brooks’ reel to him. "Jenni came up to me and said, ‘I have this director, David, and he’s really good—he’s worked with Josh Hartnett, he has a really good reel, he’s been editing, he’s done some commercials and music videos, and I think he’d be great for crossover,’ " recalls Graff, who viewed the reel and was impressed, particularly by Member. Graff met with Brooks and presented him with six scripts, including the three for Bacardi, which he felt "would be doable for spec. [David] took a look at them, and said ‘I love the Bacardi, let’s run with it.’ "
At the onset of the spec process, the three scripts were bare bones, humor-based concepts about how Bacardi drinkers get themselves into trouble when they ask for the beverage. In "Slap," a guy comes up to the bar, exchanges a flirtatious glance with an attractive woman and orders a Bacardi and cola. Upon hearing his drink order, the woman slaps him—apparently Bacardi is too risqué for her. "Date" focuses on a couple out to dinner; the guy proposes a weekend away, which thrills his female companion. All goes well until he orders a Bacardi and cola. She then ends the relationship, claiming she just can’t trust him. And "Father/Son" features a twenty-something guy at a party hosted by his parents to congratulate him on earning his MBA degree. The guy’s dad asks if he’d like a drink. The son responds with "Bacardi and cola," at which point the father regales him with the story of how he met the boy’s mother at a swingers’ club.
Brooks was attracted to the ideas in each script. "Their gentle irreverence for the brand makes them charming and refreshing," he opines. "Also, they are the type of scripts that everyone from the actors to the editors look forward to working on—an important consideration when there is no big pay day to keep the energy level up."
The Players
Brooks is no stranger to the advertising business. He is the son of noted British commercial director Bob Brooks, winner of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award for best commercial director in ’83 (that year there was an unprecedented tie; director Stu Hagman also won). The elder Brooks is the "B" in storied production company BFCS, which at one time had a bicoastal presence in the U.S., as well as a London office.
The younger Brooks didn’t immediately embark on a career in adverting. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Mass., where he studied topology, a branch of math that analyzes abstract and theoretical spaces. "I was set to become a researcher, or more likely a Wall Street risk analyst," relates Brooks. However, while at MIT, he was exposed to the media lab, an interdisciplinary program that combined computers and moving images, which led him to explore editing. Prototypes of the Avid were developed at the media lab.
Brooks started cutting music videos in the early ’90s, including clips from directors such as Paul Hunter (now with bicoastal HSI Productions) and Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge, Romeo + Juliet). Brooks also edited the first reel of a then unknown director named Spike Jonze (who now directs commercials via bicoastal/international Morton Jankel Zander).
Brooks’ big break in editing came when he cut Soul Asylum’s "Runaway Train" clip, which was directed by Tony Kaye, who is now with bicoastal Supply & Demand. Brooks notes that the video brought him into "professional contact with the advertising world," and he began cutting spots in ’95 for Kaye and others. "[Tony] Kaye’s style of advertising was antithetical to my father’s," says Brooks, "which is possibly why I was drawn to it as an exciting new area to explore. But once I started cutting spots, I realized that my background and the imprint of my father’s work had always been bubbling below the surface."
Brooks cut spots through several edit houses, including New York-headquartered Crew Cuts, Chinagraph, New York, and now-defunct Us2. While at the latter shop, Brooks cut several commercials for director Thom Higgins, now with Green Dot, Santa Monica, including Weyerhauser’s "Love Notes," and director’s cuts for Oreo’s "Basketball" and Ford’s "Generation." That trio of spots led to Higgins receiving a nomination for the DGA Award for best commercial director in ’97.
Burns earned a master of arts in photography from Leeds University, located in Northern England, and worked in the BBC’s film department, honing his DP chops on features and documentaries produced for the network. In ’96, he moved to the U.S. and began working as a freelance cameraman, eventually launching a company called Headfirst, New York, which specializes in effects and green screen projects, including Creamy Ranch for HBO and Stranger Than Fiction for the Sci Fi channel. Burns has shot ads for Pepsi-Cola, L’Oréal, Sony Ericsson and The Discovery Channel.
Brooks and Burns hit it off when they first met, and were instantly on the same page in terms of focus and style. "When I met David while shooting Sundance, I quickly realized that here was a director who comes to the set extremely well-prepared," Burns reflects. "He set out a framework and challenged me to come up with a lighting solution that pushes the idea even further. His approach eliminates the shouting and tantrums, and we can comfortably get through ten to twelve set-ups a day without killing the crew."
The CASTING
In early August, the players began to plan for the September shoot in earnest, holding casting sessions and hammering out the concepts. Katz, who urged Brooks and Burns to look into spec spots in the first place, joined the Bacardi project as a producer. In late August, Katz, Brooks, Graff and agency producer Jordana Jaffe met in Saatchi’s offices to discuss the direction of the spots. The scripts had been fleshed out, and earlier in the month, casting had begun at The Castinghouse, New York, a two-year-old company headed up by Danny Roth, who had cast several projects, including the aforementioned Rheingold project for Powell. Roth notes that he often works on spec pieces brought to him by agencies or directors he knows since they open up relationships with helmers and creatives that can lead to future work.
One of the primary items on the agenda at that August meeting was to determine what type of actors to cast for the roles in each spot, as well as what direction the scripts should take. The tag for the spots would be: "Ask for a Bacardi and you’re asking for a lot more than a drink."
It was decided that the characters in the ads needed to be realistic looking. In referring to "Date," Graff notes that "[the man and the woman] are not untouchable—you would date them." Similarly, the father in "Father/Son" "needed to be a reassuring, fundamentally male figure—solid and reliable," according to Brooks.
As things began to shape up for the shoot, Graff honed the scripts, expanding the dialogue, and in the case of "Father/Son," the role of the mother. In the original scripts, she was more of an onlooker as her husband told the tale of their meeting. As the shoot neared, her role became more important, and she became an active participant in telling her son about how she met his dad.
While discussing "Date," Graff comments, "You never see the joke coming. … Bacardi gets all the cachet, so when it’s mentioned, it portrays the complete player lifestyle, the nightlife, and being much hipper than the guy is. … [The reactions are] all about the bottle—it automatically signifies something."
Roth relates that Brooks looked at about a hundred actors for the eight principal roles. Selected for "Father/Son" were: Ned Callan (Dad), Wendy Merritt (Mom), Jason Jurman (Son) and Frank Phillips (Uncle Ed). For "Slap," the slapper was played by Liesel Leddin, and the slappee was portrayed by Stephen Winterwood. Appearing in "Date" were Sally Pressman and Christopher Mowad.
Pre-produCtion
Prior to the spec spot shoot, it was decided that a line producer should come aboard. Brooks chose David Moore, a veteran producer with his own shop, Tule River Films, Alameda, Calif., who has several spots and independent films to his credit. Moore met Brooks in Los Angeles through mutual friends shortly after the director had been to Sundance with Member. Moore was able to secure some key vendors and gather together about 70 percent of the project’s crew.
He pitched the project to the crew as a good way to make contacts on a creative project that came out of a big agency. Moore himself became involved in the project because he was "interested in building relationships and getting exposure in [the New York market]." He feels that for directors, spec spots are very helpful. "To reps who are trying to sell a director," he remarks, "spec spots show that you can work off a script, and it’s good to have as much material as possible."
The final pre-pro meeting was held a few days prior to the shoot, in a conference room at Powell. Decisions were made about shot lists, call times, equipment pickups and other housekeeping matters. Graff and Brooks also discussed the tone and dialogue in the scripts. The two were very in sync on how each ad should be shot.
The crews for the spots comprised: Gabe Weiner, first assistant director; Tony Ponti, first assistant cameraman; Robert Rau, second assistant cameraman; David Bowers, gaffer; Walter Stratford, electric; Patrick McGraw, best boy/grip; Glenn Tuma, production designer; James Wilson, art director; Rebecca Pietri, wardrobe; Alyce Shomer and Debra Vecchione, makeup; Shari Maes, hair stylist; Jonathan Nigro, sound; Ryan Barger, sound/boom; Kevin Hanny, production assistant/ driver; and Jace McLean, Joey Guerro, Chris Yoon, Gabriel Santiago and Dana Karwas, production assistants.
Vendors donating supplies and equipment included Kodak, Panavision, Ceco International, AAA Production Services and FOX Searchlight, which aided Brooks in getting film and having the dailies made. The New York office of The Mill, Technicolor Creative Services, New York and Los Angeles, and Modern Video Film, Los Angeles, handled the dailies.
THE SHOOT
The Bacardi shoot took place over the third weekend of September, with "Father/Son" being filmed at Burns’ home on Saturday. "Date" and "Slap" were shot on Sunday at New York bar/restaurant 5 on 9th, located in the trendy Meatpacking District. "If you are overdrawn at the favor bank, it would be virtually impossible to tackle a series of spec spots as tricky as these," says Burns.
The location for "Father/Son" was Burns’ living room, which worked very well as the site of a party. The room has large windows, shelves filled with books, a roomy couch and hardwood floors.
Despite a small crew and the delay brought on by the heavy rains, the "Date" shoot went pretty smoothly, although it didn’t begin so auspiciously. After the rains subsided enough for the lights to be placed outside the windows of Burns’ home, it was difficult to get a ladder safely in place to rig the lights because of the wet ground.
Once the lighting was finally sorted out, Brooks, dressed casually in a T-shirt, orange fleece and black jeans, began running the actors in "Father/Son" through a rehearsal before lights became an issue again, as the winds kicked up, blowing tree branches that caused shadows. Once that issue was resolved, shooting got underway, and the rest of the day went much more smoothly. Brooks was able to shoot two versions of the "Father/Son" script: one that featured the guy’s parents detailing how they met during a Neighborhood Watch theme night at the local swingers’ club, and another focused on the club’s dungeon room. Graff also came up with an additional line during the shoot. As the parents tell their sordid tale, their son begins to look more and more horrified, and finally says, "I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth."
Brooks was able to keep a certain amount of levity on the set despite all the difficulties, and everyone seemed willing to help out. First camera assistant Ponti brought his son along to lend a hand, while Graff jumped in and did some touch-ups on the actors after the makeup artist had left for the day.
While the shoot went well, it did go over the allotted time for the day. "On reflection, using my house as a location was perhaps not the smartest move I ever made," laughs Burns. "Let’s just say that trucks arriving at your door at six on a Saturday morning can lead to a tense Saturday evening—can I take this opportunity to publicly apologize to my wife?"
"Slap" and "Date" were shot on Sunday at the aforementioned 5 on 9th, a tri-level restaurant in a former townhouse with exposed brick walls, large windows and wood floors. "Slap" was shot at the ground floor bar, while "Date" was shot in the second floor dining area.
The shoot for the two spots went more quickly and smoothly than the shoot for "Father/Son" on the previous day; rain was not an issue, the crew had found their rhythm and time constraints proved a great motivator. The owners of the establishment needed the production out by 2 p.m., forcing some of the crew to arrive as soon as the bar closed at 4 a.m. The tight timing led to some improvisation, such as shooting some of the rehearsals. While the shoot was occasionally tense, Brooks once again kept things light. The "Slap" shoot wrapped up just a bit behind schedule, and the team shifted directly to "Date," which involved the most ad-libbing.
The actors in the spot fed off each other very well, coming up with lines on their own, and even bringing the waitress into the plot. In the original, she was there simply to take the order for a Bacardi and cola, but during the shoot, the woman, after hearing the order, asks her date if he’s seeing the waitress, and at one point, adds a line about the guy taking the waitress away for a long weekend instead of her. Brooks assuredly directed the actors, using the improvisation that worked, and axing those that didn’t.
All in all, the principal players were pleased with how the shoot went. "My favorite part was how twisted and far the copy went," Graff shares. "David was really open [to going as far] as I wanted it to go."
Brooks says that it was miraculous that they had accomplished what they did, given the time and budget constraints, and he cited the strength of the talent. "One of my worries was that because of the tight schedule, we didn’t have the coverage that normally goes into the editing room, but it helped that we had such an extended pre-pro," he says. "I met with Jason over a period of time, and we came to a consensus over what would be shot."
He also praised the efforts of Katz and Moore with helping to keep things moving, adding, "Tony [Burns] did great. One of us was always making a stand when we needed more time—it’s good to have a DP with a strong filmmaker’s opinion."
Burns praises Brooks for keeping the crew’s spirits up with his jokes and even manner, which is important when people are working for free. He also mentions the efforts of his grip, David Bowers, and his electrical team, who managed to pull together lighting set-ups when it seemed almost impossible.
The Final Product
The spots were cut in early October at Chinagraph. The three editors at the shop—Nick Martin, John Gramaglia and John Mallerman—each cut an ad. At first glance, "Date" and "Slap" were ready to go, and in some ways seemed to represent the easiest of edits. One of the only issues was timing—none were exactly sixty or thirty seconds. "Father/Son" proved more challenging. The spot, which involves several reaction shots, a more complicated soundtrack, as well as a plethora of dialogue to choose from, offered some challenges, but the final product turned out well.
For the final version of "Father/ Son," editor Martin and Brooks opted to go with a more pared down dialogue from the graduate’s mom and dad, to add in a line from Uncle Ed, and to keep the "I just threw up a little bit in my mouth" comment. For "Slap," the :15 in the package, Mallerman used a shot of the guy and girl reflected in the bar’s mirror, and added some sound effects to heighten the sound of the slap. "Date," cut by Gramaglia, used the scenes of ad-libbing and included the waitress.
For the editors at Chinagraph, keeping the simplicity of the scripts alive was of paramount importance. Mallerman, who has known Brooks for a number of years, takes on spec spots sometimes to expose himself to new directors and creatives. On Brooks’ spec spot, Mallerman observes, "It was a simple idea, which needed good comedy timing. Not only did David get good performances from the actors, he also made it look very filmic."
"I have known David Brooks for several years, from when he was working predominantly as an editor," says Gramaglia, who cut "Date." "I found his creative instincts to be quite sharp and edgy, which is what attracted me to the idea of cutting something that he would be directing. I love the opportunity of cutting comedy, and I love cutting dialogue. This particular spot is a very original idea. Many times when working on spec spots, a director has to work at somewhat of a disadvantage, with cramped shooting schedules and low budgets. … David’s directing style is original and expressive, and will only continue to evolve in the coming years."
Martin, who cut "Father/Son," has known Brooks both professionally and personally—the two went to school together during their teenage years. "For my spot, David provided excellent coverage and his desire was to keep the spot simple," Martin states. "The coverage and alternate dialogue options in fact only created the best of problems that you can have—which of the structures is the best? It was a fun project to work on and that’s another aspect of David’s directorial style that he brought to the project—making everyone have a good time on his work."
Beau Leon and Marshall Plante of The Syndicate, Santa Monica, handled color correction for the ads. Music for the spots was done through Saturday Creative, Los Angeles.
While the spots will certainly help enhance the reels of Brooks, Burns and Graff, the creative may have a chance to live beyond the confines of a DVD. The global Bacardi business is currently in review, and Saatchi may be involved in a new pitch. "The good thing about this project is that we have an opportunity to pitch the spots [to Bacardi]," remarks Graff. "The spots may be a pitch as a part of Saatchi, it might be independent of the agency. … We have this open door [with the client]. We have this opportunity, whether it’s in the United States, or somewhere around the world, where we might be able to get this to air."Z
