After watching the latest spot for Mike’s Hard Lemonade—which finds a bizarre group of ape-like men running wild in a shopping mall parking lot—you have to wonder what kind of nightmares the creative team at Cliff Freeman and Partners, New York, director Rocky Morton of bicoastal Morton Jankel Zander (MJZ) and the crew at visual effects house The Mill, New York, suffer from. Actually, while the creatures are gruesome to look at, the spot is hilarious.
The :30 opens on a man and a woman in a shopping-center parking lot. They’re loading bags into the back of a car. "I’ve got that, honey," the man says. "Thank you," she replies. He turns all cutesy, responding, "You like when Daddy helping …"
As the oh-so-in-love couple chats away, parachutes rain down from the sky at the edge of the frame. Suddenly an ape-like creature runs into sight, snatches the woman, throws her over his shoulder and dashes off, taking her who-knows-where.
The guy is left dumbfounded, standing next to the car, holding a bag, as ape-like creatures dart about him. Whitish in color, they’re tall, hulking, hairy monsters whose hideous faces are embedded in their torsos.
A stranger nonchalantly approaches the unlucky guy: "Well, that sucks," he says, observing the abduction. "Yeah, I really liked her," the guy laments. Apparently, the thought of rescuing the damsel in distress hasn’t crossed either one of their minds.
Cut to a shot of the monster running off into the distance with the girl.
"Looks like you could use a refreshing Mike’s Hard Lemonade," offers the stranger. The guy who just lost his girlfriend considers the proposition, then smiles, "You’re on!"
As a voiceover states, "A hard day calls for a hard lemonade; make it Mike’s," we see the two guys standing at the counter in a bar. Suddenly, an ape-like man leaps onto the counter, grabs a bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade out of the hand of the guy who just lost his girlfriend, and splits. Talk about a hard day.
The spot concludes with a product shot—a six-pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade sitting on the bar—with the words "Make It Mike’s" superimposed on the screen.
The out-there "Ape-Like Men" spot continues the Mike’s Hard Lemonade "you’re having a bad day" theme, according to Cliff Freeman and Partners executive producer/head of broadcast production Clair Grupp—who noted of this spot, "Nothing could be worse than the reality of this."
Given the extensive visual effects involved in "Ape-Like Men," hiring the right director was key. Grupp hadn’t worked with Morton before, but she knew of his excellent reputation, as he had collaborated with Cliff Freeman and Partners in the past. In making the final decision to hire Morton, "It came down to his creative, his reel, his treatment and his experience with effects. Also, the production company played a big part in it," added Grupp. "When you’re doing a job like this, it’s a long road, and you want to have a solid company like MJZ with you."
When he first laid eyes upon a script for the commercial, Morton was wowed by the concept. "I thought it was hilarious," he shared. "I couldn’t wait to talk to them about it. It’s rare that you get something as exaggerated as this and as brave as this in advertising."
Crafting a unique-looking creature was the first step in tackling the job. Morton and production designer Patrick Tatopoulos (whose credits include Independence Day) made sketches, then sought the input of the agency creatives, editor Gavin Cutler of MacKenzie Cutler, New York, and the visual effects team at The Mill. "I have to say, everybody had an equal voice. Through a process of elimination and discussion, we got to the final look," recounted Morton.
A sculptor created two 3-D models of the creature’s face—one with an open mouth, another with a closed mouth. Once approved by the agency, the models were laser-scanned and imported into Softimage at The Mill, where skin texture and bone structure were added, and the face was tweaked to make it even scarier, according to The Mill producer Alistair Thompson.
Once an aptly horrific face was completed, Morton, DP Julian Whatley and the crew ventured to Vancouver to shoot "Ape-Like Men" with the help of Vancouver-based Quixote Films. The action was shot as a series of plates that were later put together in post: Shots included the action of the main actor and actress, stunt men dressed as ape-like men parachuting from cranes, and actors in the ape-like men costumes dashing around the parking lot. Shooting the elements separately "gave the editor and director more freedom at the end of the day to use as much or as little action as they wanted," Thompson explained.
In shooting the film, Morton wanted to create an ominous look, as if a storm were about to begin. To help achieve that, he lit the actors in the foreground with 50k lamps. "The lamps were only about twenty feet away from the actors, so they could only stand in front of the lights for about fifteen seconds before they’d fry," Morton recalled. "But what it did was give enormous exposure on the foreground actors, which meant the backgrounds went very dark."
At the end of the shoot, Morton didn’t walk away from the job. In fact, he traveled to New York throughout the postproduction process to work with the editor, as well as with the crew at The Mill. (FYI: This job marked the first assignment for the recently opened New York office of The Mill, which is based in London.) When Morton was not in town, he was able to see what The Mill was doing via the Internet.
It was a long and involved process. "We spent four solid weeks doing Flame and CG work on this spot," reported Thompson. One of the most complicated aspects of the job was removing the heads of the actors who were dressed up as the ape-like men, then inserting the ape-like-men faces onto their torsos and creating various facial expressions.
The Mill crew included extensive detail, with moving eyes and mouths. They even went so far as to add drool that dripped from the ape-like men’s mouths. "But we had to back down on that a little bit. It was a little too gross," Thompson related, laughing.
Have we seen the last of the ape-like men? No one wanted to give away too many details, but Grupp, Morton and Thompson did promise that the two upcoming Mike’s Hard Lemonade spots will be too bizarre to be missed. "Just wait until you see them," Thompson enthused.
