When a DP spends close to three months on a job, the project must be a feature film—right? London-based DP Denis Crossan worked that long on "Surprising Journey," a :60 promoting the new Lincoln LS automobile. The spot was directed by Gerard de Thame of bicoastal HSI Productions and London-based Gerard de Thame Films via Young & Rubicam, San Francisco. "I worked on that for two and half months, which is probably the longest I’ve ever worked on a commercial," Crossan says.
"Surprising Journey" plays as essentially one complex shot. It opens on the interior of a grand piano; the camera immediately pulls back to show a pianist accompanied by an orchestra. Another pullback reveals that the musicians are an image on a CD in the LS’s CD player. Gliding farther away, the camera shows a couple riding in the car. Pulling to an even wider shot, the viewer is treated to a moving image of the car winding along a mountain road above a deep gorge.
The camera continues its backward flight and passes through a castle turret, which turns out to be a chess piece being moved by someone playing the game on a train. The LS appears again, driving alongside the train and eventually passing it. The camera continues its backward odyssey to show that the car and the train are part of a model train set. Pulling back more, the camera shows the exterior of a house and a snowy landscape. The car appears again, continuing its journey down another winding road.
The spot was shot on location in France, Corsica and Spain, with motion control photography completed at Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, England. "We were trying to find good locations that we could make work for the spot. The whole thing was supposed to happen as one continuous shot, which [had to appear] seamless," explains Crossan, who is repped in the U.K. by McKinney Macartney, London, and for U.S. projects by Soloway, Grant, Kopaloff & Associates (SGK), Los Angeles. "You look at the commercial and you don’t realize how much work is involved in it.
"I don’t think [the spot] looks effects-y," he continues. "Most of this stuff was done for real with the transitions happening in post. It’s not the same as a post- heavy job where there are hundreds of effects laid on over the top. Most of [what was filmed] was actually there in front of us."
Crossan employed a wide-angle lens on the shoot, which created its own set of challenges. "Physically getting the shot became much more difficult," he says. "You actually had to be right on top of the car with a crane. We had a Technocrane on a camera car that would do a move-out and pullback in a couple of seconds. Then we had to hold that so that the helicopter [camera crew] had a reference [for] where to take over.
"The helicopter guys had to do something that is quite unusual," he continues. "There’s a couple of helicopter shots—one coming out from the train window, and one coming away from the car. They’re both shot on a twenty-one millimeter fixed lens, which is really unusual because helicopter guys usually do everything on zoom lenses [which facilitate filming from a distance].
"On this one they couldn’t do that because to make the transitions work, we had to stick to the same lens throughout the whole thing," Crossan explains. "Those guys in the helicopter did some absolutely amazing shots. Kevin La Rosa, the helicopter pilot, got really close to the train with his rotor blades right over this train going forty miles an hour. Then he pulled back and the stunt car came right in on his rotor blades at the back. Everything was really close."
Not every ad Crossan shoots is so difficult. Steel Alliance’s "Cinder," also directed by de Thame for GSD&M, Austin, Texas, is another spot comprised of a single moving shot. The :15, which Crossan filmed at dusk, follows a flaming leaf rising up from a bonfire, dancing through the air and landing on a steel-tiled roof. The tagline follows: "Another strong argument for the new steel. Feel the strength."
"We had to imagine a [camera] move, because the leaf was added afterwards. There’s no way you could follow [the leaf] around. [The] move [had to] ramble around as if you were following a leaf, which they added in post afterwards," says Crossan. The job entailed waiting around "until the light was about to go and then doing a number of takes. It was relatively simple."
Roots
Crossan studied film at the National Film and Television School, Beaconsfield, England. After he left school, he worked on numerous music videos for artists such as Frankie Goes To Hollywood and UB40, and eventually went on to shoot features and commercials. His longform credits include I Know What You Did Last Summer and Incognito. The bulk of Crossan’s spot work is for the U.K. and European markets, but he does shoot a few U.S. ads a year. Of his relationship with de Thame, Crossan says: "I get on quite well with Gerard. He always has an idea how he wants [something] shot. He’s always trying to do something a bit interesting."
Crossan recently finished lensing a spot promoting Big Babol, an Italian chewing gum product, directed by Matt Forest via Central Milano through Selection, Milan; and an ad for Camelot’s Lottery Year 2000, directed by Simon Levene through The Pink Film Company, London, via WCRS, London. Crossan is currently shooting The Good Ship Citizen, a short musical directed by Martin Granger of Outlaw Films, London.
When asked to compare working in the U.S. and Europe, Crossan says, "I don’t know if there’s much of a difference. There are always good commercials and there’s always a whole pile of commercials that are dross. [The real difference] is whether you have a chance of working on the better commercials or not."
