Directors Zack & J.C. Make Noise For Mountain Dew
By Robert Goldrich
This spec spot takes us into the Foley room where the sound effects are being created for a kung fu movie. As we see the martial arts combatants square off, an ingenious Foley artist is spicing up their battle with appropriate, well-timed audio effects. He bangs together two bowling pins to score a rapid-fire succession of blows in a kung fu sequence. Subsequent hits are accentuated by the popping of balloons.
Wooden boards are the next audio source. The Foley artist cracks one board over his knee, then puts his fist through another, all timed perfectly to the fight action visuals.
Then he needs a big furious impact to accompany a hellacious flying drop kick being delivered by one combatant to the other–possibly the decisive blow of the battle. First the Foley artist tries banging a huge gong. Looking for even greater impact, he puts a sledgehammer to a watermelon.
Finally, he comes up with the perfect effect, popping open a can of Mountain Dew. Yet while that proves to be apt audio accompaniment for the kung fu duel to the death unfolding on film, everything is aurally downhill from there. As the combatants continue their battle, we now hear a swallowing sound as the Foley artist is guzzling the Mountain Dew. Then we see one of the martial artists ready to attack only to hear a loud belch emanate from him–indeed the Foley artist may have chugalugged his Dew a bit too fast.
An end tag carries the Mountain Dew logo.
This comedic commercial, titled “Foley,” was directed by the team of Zack Resnicoff and J.C. Khoury–a.k.a. Zack & J.C.–via the Group 101Spots initiative, a nearly three-and-a-half-year-old program whereby aspiring directors turn out spec spots to gain experience, exposure and professional industry feedback. Since its inception on the West Coast, Group101 has helped a variety of up-and-coming directors get discovered by the commercialmaking community at large. Last September, Group101 went bicoastal and formally launched in New York. Zack & J.C. are among the first crop of directors to come out of the Big Apple leg of the Group101 program.
Zack & J.C. also wrote, produced, edited and handled sound design for “Foley.” The DP was Martin Ahlgren.
Colorist was Alex Berman at Post Logic, New York. Visual effects were done at R!OT Manhattan, with Randie Swanberg serving as visual effects artist. Audio post mixer was Mike Levesque via earth2mars, New York. Principal actor was Rob Huebe.
Based largely on “Foley” and another spec piece they directed via Group101, Zack & J.C. landed a real-world job, helming a client-direct Hispanic market spot for vitamin company GenSpec. To facilitate this and other planned work for GenSpec, Zack & J.C. just launched their own New York-based production house, Shoot First Entertainment. While they look to build that venture, the directorial team is also entertaining overtures from established commercial production companies for representation.
Zack & J.C.–who met and began working together in the graduate film program at NYU–have also made their mark in the Web space as their short, Eat Less Bacon, recently debuted as part of the Aquafina series of shorts out of Tribal DDB Dallas, appearing on ResolutionsOnFilm.com.
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More