Ask Elias Merhige, who has the feature films Begotten, Shadow of the Vampire and Suspect Zero to his credit, about the differences between working on a feature film and a commercial, and he will tell you there aren’t any that are all that significant. “I put the same kind of care and the same kind of detail into both,” says the director, who is represented for spots by Santa Monica, Calif.-based Independent Media.
That’s evident in his reel of spot work. Merhige, a native of Brooklyn who learned the craft of filmmaking at The State University of New York at Purchase, made a big splash in the advertising industry last year with his first commercial effort, a :30 for PBS called “Bucket Brigade.” Created by Fallon Minneapolis and part of the television network’s “Be More” campaign, the spot finds a group of villagers banding together to save their beloved library from burning to the ground. They do so in a wonderfully unique way, scooping the fire out of the building in buckets and bringing the fire down the hill to a well to extinguish it.
Merhige’s spot credits also include a :30 for Genworth Financial titled “House Rules.” The spot has married tennis superstars Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf accepting an invitation to play tennis in a mythical land far, far away where the rules of the game are vastly more complex. Being the good sports they are, Agassi and Graf quickly get the hang of it, of course, and excel.
With both “Bucket Brigade” and “House Rules,” Merhige had to create compelling worlds from scratch. He ventured to Chile to make “Bucket Brigade,” scouting out the perfect hilltop setting in a rural town, then building a rustic stone library that looked like it had stood upon that hill for centuries.
For “House Rules,” Merhige searched long and hard for a location with spectacular mountain views that would feel like it was on the edge of the world. He found it in Simi Valley, Calif., and with the help of production designer Nathan Crowley (Batman Begins and Mission Impossible: II), Merhige constructed a monolithic tennis court in the round that, like the library in “Bucket Brigade,” felt like it had existed for centuries.
In the case of two gritty, black-and-white Nike basketball-themed spots, “I Can” and “Slam,” which finds a mix of pro athletes (NBA stars Kobe Bryant, Amare Stoudemire and Vince Carter) and everyday folks playing the game they love, Merhige didn’t have to so much create a world as he had to find it. “I really wanted to find basketball courts [in Los Angeles] where there was some real street ball going on, and I cast real street ballers,” Merhige says.
While the Nike spots play as though Merhige and his crew just stumbled upon people playing basketball, the spots were carefully storyboarded. Merhige is meticulous when it comes to crafting all of his work, personally getting involved in every element from location scouting to storyboarding. “I storyboard everything very precisely, and I handpick my team in terms of my director of photography and in terms of the people that I surround myself with,” Merhige shares. “And then I invite them over for dinner, and I have numerous conversations with them.”
Merhige is equally as collaborative with the agency creatives he works with. One has to imagine that the complicated Genworth Financial spot “House Rules” was a seriously collaborative effort, and it was, Merhige confirms. “It was me responding to the idea and to the original script, and then taking it further and presenting possibilities in terms of costume design, production design and the direction that I really wanted to take it in, and the agency responding to that,” Merhige says.
Without this kind of back and forth during which he and the agency creatives could feed off of each other’s ideas, the Genworth Financial spot wouldn’t have had the depth it ultimately had, the director adds, but could have rather felt gimmicky.
Like with most of his work, the bulk of the effects in “House Rules” were created in camera, with the only digitally created effect being the ball on fire. “CGI does not give you the same visceral quality that optics and film does,” Merhige maintains, noting. “How many times have you seen a feature film, and you see these battle scenes, and you just know that they’re all computer generated? It takes you out of it. But whereas you look at the battle scenes in Lawrence of Arabia, and you know that those are all real people, and it has a whole different effect on you completely.”
As for his most recent spot work, Merhige had just completed a launch spot for a new Toyota Camry campaign out of Saatchi & Saatchi LA, Torrance, Calif., at the time of this interview. Merhige recalls immediately being drawn to the idea behind the commercial, which allows us to observe a Toyota Camry parked outside of what looks like a Soho or Tribeca art studio falling into a déjà vu-like dream.
“I really wanted to do it, and I’m very selective about the kinds of things I do,” Merhige says of the inventive Toyota Camry commercial, pointing out, “The things that I love to spend time on involve really working with actors, working with performances and creating a world, and if a spot creatively doesn’t offer that, then it doesn’t really turn me on.”
Oscar Nominees Gather For Cocktails, Dinner and The Annual Class Picture
Five days before the Academy Awards, nearly every nominee gathered for a cocktail reception, dinner and class picture shoot that served as an Oscars orientation.
The event Tuesday night at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures was a stand-in for the annual Oscars luncheon usually held about a month earlier but scrubbed because of the Southern California wildfires.
With the voting over and winners determined, contenders got chummy and the mood was cheerful. Best actress favorites Mikey Madison and Demi Moore hugged and chatted. So did best actor front-runners Timothée Chalamet and Adrien Brody.
"Everyone say Oscar nominee!" best actress nominee Cynthia Erivo shouted gleefully from the front row of the museum's David Geffen Theater, where the dozens of nominees sat for their group picture.
Clustered in front with Erivo were three best supporting actress nominees: her "Wicked" castmate Ariana Grande, Monica Barbaro of "A Complete Unknown" and Zoe Saldaña of "Emilia Perez" along with Madison, nominated for "Anora." The five women stood in a circle and talked happily together after the photo, and kept the conversation going as they descended the stairs together to dinner.
In the back of the theater, a trio of best actor nominees sat together: Sebastian Stan of "The Apprentice," Colman Domingo of "Sing Sing" and Brody, of "The Brutalist."
After the photo was taken, Academy President Janet Yang gave the orientation presentation, reminding everyone that the 97th Academy Awards will be held Sunday.
She greeted first-time nominees and acknowledged there were also some with more than one.
Denis Villeneuve, director of "Dune: Part 2" and a four-time nominee, raised his hand. Sixteen-time best original song nominee... Read More