By the seat of your pants" is an expression that filmmaker Jonnie Ross takes to a new visual plane in this spec spot done while he was a student at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif.
In the piece—titled "The Jumps"—a young guy wearing blue jeans enters the frame to stand in the middle of a subterranean garage. He’s just hanging out, reading a newspaper. But we become aware that he’s walked "behind" what seem to be brushstrokes of bright, translucent blue. Suddenly his pants are propelling him all over the place—and not just along terra firma. Involuntarily, he’s defying gravity, bouncing through the air in spasms, like a limp marionette, losing his newspaper in the process. Those blue streaks are like a magnetic aura that somehow controls him.
Exhausted, he’s left lying on the garage floor—yet his pants keep moving, causing his body to twitch. His jeans-generated thrill ride is then simply tagged with the Levi’s logo, which floats down to rest in the upper-right corner of the screen.
The project came about through Ross’ ongoing experimentation. In this case, he was toying with a DV camera. "I found that it’s good at capturing the accidental in a professional way," he observed. "It’s almost like you pick up these in-between moments—not frozen moments, but actions in between other actions, that play in an interesting way.
The spot certainly caught the interest of Larry Bridges, the editor/director who founded longstanding editorial house Red Car, which has operations in Santa Monica, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Dallas and Toronto. Bridges saw Ross’ experimental films and immediately took the young director under his wing.
Bridges reported that he was drawn to Ross’ inherent sense of filmmaking and editing. (Ross cut the Levi’s spot on his PC.) "He’s a tremendous young talent," said Bridges of Ross. "Mentoring is a way of giving back to the community, and I simply want to help him. He instinctively has great directing and editing sensibilities."
Ross shot the Levi’s piece in his garage. He propped up the camera with some newspapers and kept it rolling, lensing himself for several minutes. Ross is the guy who’s being driven, literally, by his Levi’s.
Self-described as the kid who stayed in his basement and experimented on his computer with assorted filmmaking techniques, Ross attended the Carver Center for Arts and Technology, a magnet high school in his native Baltimore. There he learned computer animation, and his work was submitted to the Arts Recognition and Talent Search, billed as being the largest high school competition in the U.S. for graduating seniors. Ross’ experimental filmmaking in high school earned him a gold medal as a Presidential Scholar in the Arts from the Clinton administration. The award is the highest honor that a graduating high school senior can achieve in the U.S.
From there, Ross went on to Art Center, where teacher Errol Gerson was impressed enough to introduce the student to Bridges. Gerson and Bridges had come to know each other through their earlier collaborations on the CAA media lab project, which explored emerging multimedia.
"Larry’s a mentor to me," related Ross. "He’s helping me get around to different production companies so that I can advance my career as a director. I’m learning a great deal about filmmaking and the business from him. I feel very fortunate."
