By Christine Champagne

A new ESPN spot titled “Changing” (:30) finds two guys sprucing up a dive bar. Among other things, we see them washing windows, scraping gum off the underside of a table, dousing the joint with deodorizing spray, tearing down a poster of a hot chick and carefully arranging potato chips on a paper plate. At first, one wonders why these bar keepers–hardly Martha Stewart types–are going to the trouble. Then it becomes clear what their intentions are when the words, “Welcome, ladies” appear on screen, and one of the guys turns on the bar’s flat-screen television, tuning it in to ESPN.

    Created by Ground Zero, Marina del Rey, Calif., and directed by Vance Malone of Food Chain Films, Portland, Ore., “Changing” sprang from ESPN’s desire to make a concerted effort to get more women to watch the sports network. “We wanted to offer [that message] up in a fun way,” Ground Zero creative director Court Crandall said, “letting women know they were always welcome but showing we’re making a special effort to make ESPN a little more hospitable.”

Malone, who hadn’t worked with Ground Zero before, loved the idea thought up by copywriter Tom O’Connor and art director Jeff Lable. “They came to me with a script, and the script was pretty loose. It was not a script in the classic sense of A connects to B connects to C,” Malone shared. “But it was a script with a description of what the guys should do, and then some ideas of what they should do. Then we collaborated and expanded on those ideas and built the spot in a way that they could construct it in post, so that we weren’t locked in from one shot to the next.”

 

HUMOR ON TAP

“Changing” was shot in one 12-hour day on location at Portland’s Skyline Tavern. “I think we scouted every bar within a five-mile radius of Portland,” Malone said.

The Skyline Tavern was chosen because it had a casual feel but wasn’t dark and dingy like so many of the other bars Malone checked out. “It couldn’t feel like so much of a cave that even guys wouldn’t go in it,” Malone remarked.

After conducting casting sessions in Los Angeles and Portland, Malone ultimately hired two actors–Cliff Bemis and Michael Reeder–to play the bar keeps not only for their Average Joe looks but also because he felt they would deliver the real yet subtle performances “Changing” required.

In shooting the spot, Malone and DP Joe Reade took a simple, cinematic approach, “putting one camera at shoulder height where it was easy to operate and pointing it right down the middle of the room and using one light, lighting from the side,” Malone explained. “That approach allowed us to have quick set ups and quick turnarounds and allowed us time to brainstorm on the set.”

One of those brainstorming sessions resulted in the great scene in which one of the guys walks the length of the bar spraying the deodorizer into the air.

Once the shoot wrapped, the mono-monikered Katz of Cosmo Street, Santa Monica, Calif., cut “Changing” into :30 and :60 versions. (As of press time, the :60 had not aired, although Crandall reported that it might get a cinematic run.)

Malone was thrilled with the final cut. “They actually took all of the scenes that I thought were the most fun and put them on the screen,” Malone said. “I had anticipated the scraping of the gum landing on the cutting room floor, but it also made it onscreen.”

By the way, Katz is credited for selecting the track that accompanies the spot: Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual.” “It was a classic case of everyone getting attached to the scratch track. It was on the rough cut, and everybody was like, ‘That’s so perfect,’ ” Crandall recalled. “Nothing else lived up to it, so we were able to work a deal through ESPN to get the rights to the song.”

    Crandall noted that originally he thought the spot should be accompanied by Irish, bar-drinking music. “But I think what plays with [“It’s Not Unusual”] is the peppiness of it,” Crandall mused. “It’s just very upbeat, and it adds a sense of humor to the whole thing.”

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