Will Hartman, whose prime job is serving as a copywriter at Ogilvy & Mather, Culver City, Calif., continues to be active during his spare time on a side gig, directing. While those helming endeavors have in recent years been primarily in the short film arena, he just wrapped a commercial–“Coyotes Checking”–for Desert Schools Federal Credit Union out of Phoenix agency MMA Advertising.
This comes some three-and-a-half years after his last real-world spot helming assignment, a campaign for Major League Baseball’s Pittsburgh Pirates, which included “McClendon,” an ad that earned a place in our “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery in 2004 (SHOOT, 6/25/04).
Like “McClendon,” Hartman’s latest commercial is comedic in nature and sports-oriented, featuring National Hockey League star Shane Doan of the Phoenix Coyotes. “I’m fortunate to be at Ogilvy working for a creative director, Dan Burrier, who believes in his staff people diversifying, being versatile and exercising their creative muscle in other pursuits like directing,” related Hartman.
“As long as I take care of my responsibilities as a writer, he is supportive of me and others exploring other creative areas, in my case directing. It’s part of the new hybrid that’s happening at different shops, having creatives who can do other things, like direct, to perhaps take on new media opportunities down the road that have challenged budgets.”
“Coyotes Checking” would certainly qualify as being modestly budgeted but you wouldn’t know it otherwise. The spot opens on a man who’s chatting on a cell phone, telling presumably his significant other that he’ll be along right after he gets some cash out of the Desert Schools Federal Credit Union ATM machine in a shopping mall. Carrying a bag of popcorn, he approaches the ATM and presses the buttons, awaiting his withdrawal. But as he faces the automatic teller, we see behind him in our foreground a uniformed person skating by a couple of times.
Just as the cash transaction payout is about to happen, the spot switches to a security camera shot of the guy looking into the ATM screen–at which point he gets smashed hard into the teller machine, sending popcorn flying all over the place. That scene is then paused and rewound as it turns out we have been viewing it on a monitor in a Desert Schools Federal Credit Union boardroom. Two execs inform the ice skater, who’s revealed to be Coyotes player Doan, that this “is not the kind of checking we had in mind”–the undesired, high-impact “checking” being what you would typically see along the Plexiglas surrounding a rink at an NHL game.
Doan looks sheepishly at the execs as if he didn’t do anything wrong. A shot of a Desert Schools Federal Credit Union bank card is then followed by Doan and a female companion watching the ATM replay with delight on a big screen.
MMA
Hartman landed the job from MMA, working with a creative team consisting of creative directors Jeff Moss and Ted Anderson, copywriter Rodney Alling and producer Chris Poisson. The job was produced by production/editorial house Blade in Phoenix. Hartman’s support team included Blade’s executive producer Louise Parker and company principal Mark Trengrove who served as DP and colorist. Editor was Blade’s Ron Sussman.
“MMA was really open to my suggestions about building a bit of mystery and suspense before the initial hit, and by doing pre-shooting tests and experimenting with frame rate speed to help make the hit against the Plexiglas look as realistic as possible,” said Hartman. “The pre-shooting also allowed us to move quickly through the actual shoot day with Doan who was in the middle of pre-season training and only available to us for a short period of time.”
Short pedigree
Hartman’s short film experience includes directing and writing several comedic projects such as: Moosecock in 2006, which starred Brian Baumgartner from NBC’s The Office and went on to hit the festival circuit; Easy Pickins,’ which won the ’07 Slamdance Film Festival grand prize for best screenplay as well as a $50,000 film grant from the New Mexico Film Commission’s Duke City Shootout competition. The 50 grand enabled Hartman to make Easy Pickins’ which then earned the Best Picture and Audience Awards, among other honors, at the Duke City Shootout. Next up for Hartman are two more shorts he directed and penned–and which he’s targeting to make the festival rounds with in ’08: The Frequency of Claire, a romantic comedy; and Art of Karaoke, which centers on a senior citizen who discovers he can croon like Frank Sinatra.
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