Just about any time that athletes and sporting events are depicted in television commercials, the scenes are over-the-top, in-your-face and manipulated with all sorts of special effects. Oh, and of course, there is the requisite loud, pulsating music. But a new sport-themed spot for Nike, called "Move," quietly breaks through the clutter due to its refreshing realness—not to mention its classy soundtrack. Created by Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), Portland, Ore., directed by Jake Scott of bicoastal RSA USA, and scored by bicoastal Elias Arts, the ad is simply poetic.
"We were all in agreement right from the get-go that there should be no tricks," said Scott, "that it should be done in real time, twenty-four frames per second, going back to classic, simple filmmaking. We’ve seen enough slo-mo and speeded-up stuff and overt use of digital effects."
For those of you who may not have seen "Move," which broke during the recent Winter Olympics, the :90 opens on an average teenage boy jogging down what could be any suburban street. What follows is a parade of professional and amateur athletes pursuing their various sports. The professionals include skier Picabo Street hurtling down a mountain, speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno turning sharply on a short track and tennis star Lindsay Davenport ripping a backhand. Among the amateurs are a skateboarder nailing a risky jump, a Frisbee player tossing a disc to his Jack Russell terrier and an older man completing a taxing routine on a pommel horse. (W+K copywriter Mike Byrne also managed to find his way into the spot: If you look quickly, you’ll recognize him as the man playing the golf-themed video game Golden Tee.) Ultimately, the spot ends up right where it began, with the teenage boy jogging down the street.
Despite the fact that everyone is practicing a disparate sport, all of the scenes seamlessly glide from one to another. For example, in one sequence we see a female jogger on the street. Her feet move up and down as she runs in place at a curb, waiting for the light to change. Cut to the feet of a female base jumper perched atop a bridge. Suddenly, she leaps, floats downward, and hits the ground running. The scene shifts to a man running down a track. Turns out he is a long jumper, and he makes a giant leap, landing in a pile of sand. Cut to a toddler jumping on a bed and falling backward into a pillow.
While the spot’s flow feels natural, it is, of course, the result of extensive planning. Editor Adam Pertofsky of Rock Paper Scissors, Los Angeles, was brought on board early to help shape the ad. "I think they deci-ded on Adam before they decided on me," says Scott, noting how vital the editor’s contribution was to this job.
"It was a very collaborative effort, and that shows in the work," Scott continues. "The storyboard was vital. To be honest, we never really deviated from it. That was strange because usually you do. But it was so carefully worked out that anything you tried to do upset the balance."
Scott and DP Max Malkin shot "Move" over 10 days. Most of the filming was done in and around Los Angeles, although the crew traveled to Steamboat Springs, Colo., to shoot the snow sports, and to Sacramento, Calif., for the base-jumping sequence—which, by the way, ranked as the most stressful part of the production.
Base jumper Lottie Aston—whom the W+K creatives had learned about via a Details magazine article on female extreme sports stars—is a widely respected pro. Still, Scott admits, it was nerve wracking for all involved to watch her and a cameraman (who was also an experienced base jumper) leap off a bridge over and over. "We shot that three days into the shoot, and everybody was a bit on edge. At the end of that day, we partied like I’d never seen a crew party. We partied like it was the wrap party," Scott relates, laughing.
Meanwhile, Byrne confesses to having been a bit antsy when it came to shooting the skateboarder flying off the roof of a carwash and gliding down a sloped wall. "It’s like only three people have ever landed this move," he points out. The team was lucky enough to find one of those three people—an enthusiastic local kid with the mojo and the ability to complete the trick. During the audition process, "Two guys turned up before him and said, ‘Uh-uh’ and left,’ " recalls W+K copywriter Kash Sree—who co-wrote "Move" with Byrne.
Problems could have arisen in any of the scenarios that were shot. But everything went fairly smoothly, according to Scott. It was coming up with the right soundtrack for the spot that actually caused headaches. "The music was the most difficult part," acknowledges W+K creative director/art director Hal Curtis. "We struggled to find the right piece. Our original thought was a more percussive, aggressive track. But Mike and Kash were really into trying some different things musically." Instructed to experiment, the composers at Elias whipped up more than a dozen tracks for the W+K creatives, and it was a soft, piano-oriented track composed by Jonathan Elias that caught everyone’s ear. "That piano track came on, and everybody was like, ‘That’s it!’ " recalls Byrne.
Once the soundtrack was in place, the spot truly came toge-ther, Curtis reports. The mix of professional and amateur athletes, the real and natural production, and the music combined helped to create an ad that would appeal to anyone who watched the Winter Olympics—not just to hard-core athletes and thrill-seeking teens. While ads generally target specific demographics, Nike was aiming to reach a wide audience with this spot. "We wanted to show that sport is a shared experienced," Curtis explains. "whether you’re a kid on a skateboard or a pro like Vince Carter playing an NBA game."
