Divulging Secrets
By Millie Takaki
You wouldn’t expect an Oscar ceremony highlight to come from the documentary short award category presentation. But in accepting the honor for Breathing Lessons in 1997, filmmaker Jessica Yu delivered what is now a famous line: “You know you’ve entered new territory when your outfit costs more than your film.”
It was a real moment, most appropriate for a director known for capturing real-life moments–a reputation further advanced in one of her most recent ad endeavors, an 11-spot Secret antiperspirant campaign for Leo Burnett USA, Chicago. The campaign features several sets of real women–a mix of relatives and best friends–revealing secrets to each other for the first time on camera. The work, commemorating Secret’s 50th anniversary, was produced by bicoastal Nonfiction Spots, the commercialmaking home to Yu and other noted documentary helmers.
The spots show women sharing touching moments. For example, in “Spin The Bottle,” a teenage daughter tells her mother about a first kiss. The mother’s secret is she knew about the kiss all along.
In “Brother,” a woman learns that her brother has been dating her best friend. In “Married Him,” a middle-aged woman tells her best friend, “I had to bribe my brother to take you to the junior prom.” Upon hearing the secret, the other woman laughs uncontrollably since she wound up marrying him. And in “Miss Maryland,” friends swap secrets. “Andrew and I are eloping next weekend…What’s your secret?” The response: “I lied about being Miss Maryland.”
A parting voiceover to each spot invites viewers to, “Try Limited Edition Secret and celebrate 50 years of strong women.”
“When the idea for the campaign was first proposed, there was an excitement about using real people,” recollects Yu. “But it wasn’t a done deal. We had to show through casting that we could do this. You try to find people whose personalities seem to have spark, who have something to say. And then you create the circumstances, the environment, where they feel they can be themselves. There’s a great group of people at Nonfiction used to dealing with people and helping them forget that they’re being filmed.
“We also had to make sure of the strength of these women’s relationships,” continues Yu. “We had to feel they could reveal their secrets, that they could survive the secrets being disclosed and that their relationships would be stronger as a result of divulging the secrets….Having worked in documentaries with real people for years, my experience has been that they exceed your expectations once you connect with them. That was the case in these commercials.”
The campaign also has proven to be a catalyst driving people to Secret’s special Web site (www.shareyoursecret.com) to access more about the women who shared their secrets–and the aftermaths of their disclosures. A behind-the-scenes crew followed the women after the secrets were revealed. “The initial response in the spots let’s you know where things are headed,” relates Yu. “But they also evoke curiosity for more backstory, to get a sense of what the conversation would be once these women went back home. The continuation of the story engages viewers further.”
Key to the entire project was getting the right women and being careful not to let in those who would “manufacture” secrets in order to get on television. Traditional and atypical means of looking for real people were deployed. Besides running listings to find women, casting directors dropped off postcards at coffee shops and went to college campuses to find people who wouldn’t normally be looking to appear in a commercial. “We went with a little bit of a man-on-the-street approach, smaller creative networking, sometimes targeting community centers, clubs, different organizations,” Yu relates.
Yu credited the creative team at Burnett, DP Karl Hahn and editor Steve Stein of Cutters, Chicago, among others, for their contributions to the campaign.
Over the past year, Yu has opened up her schedule to accommodate more spotmaking opportunities. She just wrapped spots for Glaxo Smith Kline’s smoking cessation product Commit via Arnold New York, which are slated to debut later this year. Earlier she took on projects for Big Lots chain stores and Disney. Past credits include commercials for MasterCard and Hyundai. The look isn’t always reminiscent of documentary fare but the common bond evident in all Yu’s work is capturing authentic moments with people.
She remains active in documentaries, building on a filmography that includes the feature-length The Living Museum, which was nominated for the Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize, and In the Realms of the Unreal. The latter debuted on PBS P.O.V., was nominated for Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize as well as a 2006 primetime Emmy Award for merit in nonfiction filmmaking. Yu has also diversified into episodic television, directing installments of such primetime series as The West Wing, ER, Grey’s Anatomy and House. “My episodic experience informs and helps me bring something different to my documentary and commercial work just as my commercials add to and enhance my documentaries and series TV,” she observes.
Whatever enhancements graced her Secret work, Yu realized she had something special based on a bit of off-camera banter on the set. “When I heard a couple of grips arguing over who had the best secret,” says Yu, “I realized that we were on track with the campaign.”
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More