By Christine Champagne

Volkswagen’s first-ever short film, “The Check Up,” made its world premiere at the recent 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Created by Arnold Worldwide, Boston, and directed by Dayton/Faris–Jonathan and Valerie, respectively–of bicoastal Bob Industries, the six-and-a-half minute film finds a free-spirited 31-year-old named Mike (Kevin Connolly, HBO’s Entourage) visited by an agent (veteran actor Joe Pantoliano) from the Federal Commission of Adulthood. It seems that the agency has been pressuring Mike to grow up for some time, and the agent is dropping by to see if the young man has made any progress. According to the agent, driving the brand new Volkswagen Jetta 5 would certainly be a step in the right direction, and Mike would be only too happy to upgrade to the latest version of the Volkswagen Jetta he has loved since he was a kid.

The film builds on Volkswagen’s overall campaign theme, Alan Pafenbach, Arnold executive creative director/managing partner, pointed out, noting, “The film just gives further elaboration to the whole notion of ‘It’s all grown up, sort of,’ this whole idea that there are these people who have trouble transitioning from free-spirited youth to adulthood.”

While “The Check Up” debuted at Sundance (the film played before the screening of the comedic feature film Strangers With Candy and was also shown at the Volkswagen outpost on Main Street in Park City, Utah), it was produced specifically to be part of an interactive DVD for Volkswagen available online, at promotional events and auto shows and in select entertainment magazines. The intention is for “The Check Up” to serve as “a bridge between the positioning that we had in the offline advertising” and the DVD, Pafenbach said.

 

IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT

Dayton/Faris shot “The Check Up”– scripted mainly by Arnold creative director/copywriter Dave Weist and associate creative director/art director Colin Jeffery, according to Pafenbach–while they were in the midst of shooting a Volkswagen television campaign for Arnold late last year.

“The way it evolved was, we were doing the television campaign with Dayton/Faris, and then in the middle of preproduction on that we made the decision to swap out one of the television commercials and swap in this project,” Pafenbach related.

Time for the production of “The Check Up” was limited. Only one shoot day–approximately 10 hours in length–could be devoted to the film, which was shot on location in Long Beach, Calif., with Salvatore Totino as DP.

“It was really tough, and we shot two cameras the entire time. So it was quite a packed house. But it was fun,” Dayton said. “We’d worked enough with the Volkswagen people, and we were prepared enough so that when we went to shoot, it wasn’t like your traditional commercial where you shoot, and then everyone talks about the take, and there are long discussions between takes. We shot continuously, and everyone was pretty much on the same page. So it was a very efficient operation.”

Brickyard VFX, Boston and Santa Monica, handled the compositing, conforming and color balancing for the film. More specifically, the visual effects artisans at Brickyard VFX performed monitor comps, creating the image of a 360-degree spinning car on Mike’s laptop computer and enhancing the flashes that emanated from the camera used by the agent to photograph Mike’s apartment.

“The most time that we spent was balancing the color out in the film [using Flame],” according to Geoff McAuliffe, partner/visual effects artist at Brickyard VFX. “There was pretty high contrast–it was a very low-lit room, and then you had this very bright light from the window. So there were some pretty tough situations lighting-wise, and it was pretty difficult to get it balanced out.”

    Incidentally, McAuliffe and Brickyard VFX producer Michael McCarthy were among those who traveled to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, to see “The Check Up.” Arnold’s Jeffery, who as previously noted co-wrote the film, was there, too, along with Weist. “It was an exciting experience for Dave and I going out there and being able to get an audience reaction in person. We got a few laughs, which was good,” Jeffery commented. “I think people enjoyed it.”

Additional credit for “The Check Up” goes to Arnold chairman/chief creative officer Ron Lawner and producers Bill Goodell and Jennifer Wrentmore. T.K. Knowles, John O’Grady and Chuck Ryant served as executive producers for Bob Industries, and Bart Lipton was line producer.

JD Smythe of Rock Paper Scissors, Los Angeles, edited “The Check Up.”

Partner/visual effects artist Dave Waller of Brickyard VFX and assistant visual effects artists Peter Bullis and Robin Hobart also worked on the film.

Sean Coleman of Company 3, Santa Monica, was colorist.

The music for “The Check Up” was composed by Peter DuCharme, arranged by Sammy Rubin and produced by Ben Davis–all of Music for Picture, New York. The mix was completed by Mike Secher and Brian McKeever of Soundtrack Recording Studios, Boston, and Secher also did the sound design.

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