The USA Men’s National Soccer Team is ranked sixth in the world, and earlier this month the team clinched a spot in the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. It should be cause for celebration, but, well, not a lot of Americans follow soccer in large part because it doesn’t get the network television coverage that sports like football and baseball do.
Meanwhile, there are American sportscasters out there–Jim Rome and Frank Deford, among them–who bash the sport. “Our soccer team probably gets more respect from other countries than our own,” mused Dylan Lee, a soccer-loving copywriter at Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), Portland, Ore., and one of the creatives behind an inspirational :60 Nike spot, “FC USA,” that serves as a rallying cry for Americans to get behind our team.
Featuring soccer stars such as Freddy Adu and Landon Donovan as well as amateurs, the spot also strives to show Americans that soccer isn’t such a foreign sport. In fact, it is being played all across the country–from cornfields to city streets.
The spot blends imagery with audio to score its points. As “FC USA” opens, we see a series of aerial shots and hear a sportscaster knocking soccer. “Let’s be honest,” the sportscaster says. “Soccer’s not important to anybody in this country–let’s leave it that way.”
As the camera glides down to Earth, his views are contradicted by a series of vignettes in which we see Americans playing soccer in a variety of settings–even on baseball fields and tennis courts.
The play is pure and passionate, and the accompanying soundtrack, “Go Tell the World” by Joy Zipper, contributes to the feeling of celebration, pride and excitement generated by the imagery.
KICK START
According to Lee, it was critical that this spot feel real and authentic. Given his skill in portraiture and capturing real moments, Malcolm Venville of bicoastal Anonymous Content was hired to direct “FC USA.”
The project would require that he–along with DPs Max Malkin and Emmanuel Lubeski–create the sense that viewers were indeed seeing soccer being played all over the U.S. when, in fact, the footage was shot solely in and around the cities of Chicago and Los Angeles.
To create a sense of scope, Venville took to the skies, shooting the aerial footage that opens the spot from a helicopter. Back on the ground, he simply shot as many locations as he could. It was a real run-and-gun operation. Venville and his crew shot for five days total. If one didn’t know better, one would think that Venville had captured the footage while on a cross-country road trip spanning weeks or months even.
While the shoot was grueling, Venville said that the most difficult part of his role as director came earlier on in the process when he had to cast amateur soccer players. “Casting soccer players from SAG is impossible,” Venville said. “We had to go out and find soccer coaches and see players. We saw hundreds of kids.”
Ultimately, dozens were cast. Venville said working with them was a special experience that made this project particularly worthwhile. “They just wanted to give. There was no baggage,” the director said of the soccer players. “They just wanted to play their best and give one hundred percent.”
Once the shoot wrapped, Venville said that the agency gave him a week on his own in the editing room with editor Angus Wall at Rock Paper Scissors, Los Angeles. (It should be noted that editor Brad Waskewich also worked on the spot.) “Then [the creatives] came in, and it became a group effort,” Venville reported, pointing out, “I never felt like I was going to a party where I wasn’t invited. I always felt like I was in the family, which is really important.”
The editing process went on for weeks. “It was a longer process than usual,” Lee acknowledged. “There was so much good footage. Fortunately, everyone internally [at the agency] and at Nike was very patient about that and could see that it was going to be good.”
Venville had shot ten hours of film. Obviously, only a fraction could be used in the spot. “We lost so much great stuff. But if I got upset about it, I’d be dead by now,” Venville cracked.
As for music, dozens of songs were considered. “The words had to be right, and the tempo had to be right. We were looking for something that was a rallying cry but not a happy, cheerleading song,” Lee explained. That rallying cry wound up being the aforementioned “Go Tell the World,” an energetic track from an emerging band known as Joy Zipper.
All in all, the making of “FC USA” was a lengthy but smooth process. Well, there was one incident. “We did lose [soccer player] Carlos Bocanegra’s wallet and pantSáoh, and his cell phone, too,” Lee shared. “He had changed into his soccer gear, and when we finished shooting, he was like, ‘Where’s my wallet and pants?’ “
Panic ensued. “Everyone was freaking out,” Lee related. Fortunately, the situation ended well. “We were moving so fast that it got packed up, and someone had taken it to the next location.”