Straw Dogs, a bicoastal production company owned by New York-headquartered, publicly traded Paradise Music & Entertainment (NASDAQ: PDSE), has added director Stan Morse for commercial representation.
Morse was signed on the strength of a visual effects/ graphics-heavy spot package he freelance co-directed earlier this year for Coors Light out of FCB Chicago. That job was produced by Los Angeles-based design and production company Imaginary Forces, and was co-directed by Imaginary Forces staff directors Kurt Mattila, Adam Bluming and Karin Fong.
According to Straw Dogs president/CEO Craig Rodgers, FCB producer John McIntosh told him about Morse and forwarded along a reel of the Coors Light work. The scenes in the comedy/dialogue spots seemingly take place as if they are on the Internet.
In one such spot, "Seat Taken," a man at a bar saves a seat for his buddy. When a beautiful woman walks by and asks if the seat is taken, the man freezes. As he does, his image remains frozen on the screen as a graphic reading "System is frozen" pops up. From the taskbar, the cursor clicks on the "Coors Light" option from a pull-down window, opening up a graphic of a "24 hour Rockies cam." The cursor then clicks on the original frozen window to resume the action; this time, after the woman asks if the seat is taken, the guy immediately answers "no."
Among other Coors Light spots in the campaign are "22," in which a 22-year-old man misunderstands the stipulation that you have to be 21 to drink Coors Light; "AC," in which a repairman uses a bottle of Coors Light as a coolant in a broken air conditioner; and "Bouncer," in which a guy who uses the excuse he left his I.D. in his other pants gets the star-treatment at a bar, but is still denied entrance.
Rodgers said he was duly impressed with the work he saw on Morse’s reel. "It’s absolutely hysterical," said Rodgers, who cited the "AC" spot, highlighted by the performance of the donut-munching repairman, as particularly funny. "It’s very documentary in style, [the comedy] is so real and they are great concepts and great performances. I get reels from so many directors and I watch them laboriously all the time. This one was completely unique and extremely funny; it just cut through everything I’d been seeing. I really rushed to sign him before anybody knew about him because I was afraid once these spots started airing, he’d be getting calls."
Although Morse did talk with a few production companies, he said he found Straw Dogs to be the best fit, citing his rapport with Rodgers and director Jesse Dylan, who is also chairman/ CEO of Paradise.
Since March ’99, Morse had been on staff at Hollywood-based LOADtv, a leading pre-cached video delivery network on the Internet. There, he was responsible for writing, producing and directing original content for the Web. In that span, Morse estimates, he helped produce some 400 comedy sketches. Before that, he spent eight months as a freelance production coordinator, and in that capacity, had worked with Imaginary Forces on a few projects, including spots for Cadillac and Playtex, as well as promos for Showtime.
This relationship with Imaginary Forces proved key to the Coors Light assignment. "Having worked with those guys [at Imaginary Forces], they kind of knew the direction I was heading in," Morse explained. "When they got this Coors Light bid, one of the directors, Kurt Mattila, called me and said, ‘We don’t have any comedy on our reel. I know you’re doing all that stuff with LOADtv; why don’t you send over some samples of your work?’"
Imaginary Forces was impressed with Morse’s work and submitted it to FCB for consideration. A conference call with the agency clinched the deal, and Morse and Imaginary Forces were awarded the job in early January. Morse, Mattila, Bluming and Fong helmed the commercials over eight days in February; some of the ads broke on cable outlets in April and began airing on network channels in May.
Said Morse, "I’m pretty sure FCB derived [inspiration] from a previous campaign, Coors Light Channel, they’d done with Spike Jonze [of bicoastal/international Satellite Films] where the whole feel was like Saturday Night Live sketch comedy."
For this current Coors Light effort, the intention was to spoof the Internet, related Morse, adding that they shot on film and on digital video, which was then manipulated and degraded in the Avid to get the poor quality Internet graphics look. "There’s still a lot of Americans with a dial-up modem, which is horrendous," said Morse. "When they look at video, that is their experience: net congestion, buffering and all the problems that go into the connection. We thought it would be a good idea to make fun of that whole experience."
Morse said that his background as an improv performer and director helped to inform his directing skills on this project. He continues to own a Cleveland-based improv theatre, Cabaret Dada, which he founded five years ago, and he directs a Los Angeles-based improv group, Liquid. "Live action comedy fits so well in the palm of my hand; it’s like second nature to me," related Morse.
Commenting on his unusual route to spot directing, Morse observed, "I don’t know if there’s a tried and tested way to make it into the commercial world as a director, but this seemed to work for me."
Besides Morse, the company’s directorial roster includes Dylan, Neil Burger, Jason Farrand, Deb Hagan, Mike Rowles, Barry Sonnenfeld and Rob Lieberman, who maintains his own bicoastal shop, The Lieberman Company, in association with Straw Dogs. Representation for Straw Dogs is handled by Chris Messiter and Ann McKallagat on the East Coast; Tracy Bernard & Associates in the Midwest, and Paula Arnett on the West Coast.
