A woman enjoys two handfuls of cotton candy as she goes for a stroll. She comes upon a man who is walking his cute little dog. The woman pets the pooch, asking the man the name of his pet.
“Minnie,” he responds, as his cell phone rings. He diverts his attention to the phone call.
The woman is fortunate he’s distracted because her sticky fingers are stuck to the dog. She cannot shake the doggie. Rather than admit that she’s gotten herself in a sticky situation, the gal puts her hand behind her back, hiding the dog from the man’s view.
He gets off the phone and wonders where Minnie went. “Where’s my dog?” he asks, clearly becoming a bit more panicked with each passing moment.
The woman pleads ignorance and looks around as if trying to find out Minnie’s whereabouts. However, her predicament gets more complicated as she inadvertently places her free hand on a nearby parked car. Now she’s also stuck to the vehicle.
A product shot and voiceover put this comical slice of life into the proper sales context. “Wet Ones. When you can’t wash your hands,” relates the voiceover, as we see a container of the moist paper wipes.
We return to the sidewalk scene to find that the woman has extricated her hand from the car, which has driven off. Relieved, she wipes her brow with her other hand, revealing that “Minnie” is still stuck to her. The puzzled man sees his beloved dog hanging off the woman’s hand.
Entitled “Sticky,” this spec spot is one of several directed and conceived by Scott Squires, who also handled the visual effects on the job. Squires is an established visual effects artist, who had been on staff for years at Industrial Light+Magic (ILM). There he served as a visual effects supervisor on several feature films and commercials; these endeavors included Academy Award-nominated work for visual effects on The Mask, Dragonheart and Star Wars Episode 1 Phantom Menace. His last feature effects project was Van Helsing. He also had occasion to helm a few national commercials for HP and Intel, among others.
Squires, who is based in the Northern California town of Novato, recently went out on his own to focus fully on his directorial career. He recently assembled a reel on which spec spots are prominent and has begun circulating the work to prospective spot production house roosts.
“Sticky” was produced by commercial/music video house Bad Company Films, which has offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Raub Shapiro of Bad Company served as producer. The DP was Don Smith.
The spot was cut by San Francisco-based independent editor Dan Hayes. Colorist was Chris Martin of Spy Post, San Francisco. Audio post mixer was Matt Wood of Crescendo! Studios, San Francisco.
Principal actors were Marika Casteel and Andre Mathieu. The dog Minnie was trained by Greg Holland of Animal Arts, San Francisco. The dog was connected to the woman’s hand with a rig developed by production designer Darin Hunt. Minimal rig removal was done in post.
