Crossroads’ Mark Pellington Shoots Spots For Deutsch Inc., New York.
CLIENT
IKEA.
PRODUCTION CO.
Crossroads Films, bicoastal. Mark Pellington, director; Nick Wollner, executive producer; George Fares, producer; Bobby Bukowski, DP; Richard Piekos, art director. Shot at Silvercup Studios, Long Island City, N.Y.
AGENCY
Deutsch Inc., New York. Kathy Delaney, creative director; Guy Williams, senior producer; Matt Myers, senior art director; Cheryl Van Ooyen, senior copywriter.
EDITORIAL
Editing Concepts, New York. Owen Plotkin, editor.
POST
The Tape House, New York, Peter Heady, online editor. Nice Shoes, New York, Scott Burch, colorist.
AUDIO POST
Howard Schwartz Recording, New York. Steve Rosen, audio engineer.
SOUND DESIGN
corncob, New York. Peter C. Lopez, sound designer.
Turning a cold, metal subway car into a colorful, cozy living room was the task given by the creative team at Deutsch Inc., New York for a :30 directed by Mark Pellington of bicoastal Crossroads Films. The spot, “Home Sweet Subway,” features an IKEA-jumpsuited SWAT team, wielding rugs, vases and coffee tables, that attacks an arriving subway car. By spot’s end it has transformed the frigid commuter tube into a stylish interior that could be a Metropolitan Home layout.
The commercial is part of a two-spot package Pellington directed for the Swedish furniture company. The other :30, “Operating Room,” does a similar makeover with a hospital surgical facility.
Deutsch senior art director Matt Myers said the agency was given pretty free rein with the image spots as long as they conveyed IKEA’s range of furnishings and how the store can help its customers take on any home decorating challenge.
“We thought we’d show how IKEA can take even the places you’d least think of as livable spaces and convert them into comfortable places by showing the most extreme examples,” Myers said. Other settings considered were an Army helicopter, a hockey rink and–most challenging of all–a gas station toilet.
To help create the mood for “Home Sweet Subway”–which was meant to show what one can do with a small apartment–Myers said that he took pictures of a subway car and made a collage, which the creative team used in place of a conventional storyboard. Pellington, Myers added, “did a real nice job of interpreting the simple, farcical demonstration.”
Pellington, who explained his goal was to show a quick transformation from the monochromatic colors of a subway car to the bright colors of an IKEA-furnished room, said that the collage presentation worked well. The creative team, he added, was “very supportive, open and free-form, and let me get in there and keep shooting and change lights around rather than demanding super-carefully plotted storyboard shots.”
“He was really organized,” Myers said of Pellington. “He got the concept really fast and didn’t add stuff that would fight it.” He was also impressed with how Pellington brought the feeling of motion to the spot even though it was shot on a set.
Pellington said he achieved the motion effect by keeping the camera moving, flickering the lights and having the actors sway as though the car were moving. He gave a special nod to the teamwork of DP Bobby Bukowski and gaffer Charley McNamara, whom he said together helped create the illusion.
The only real debate the spot faced was whether to use a real subway or a constructed set. While the spot wound up being shot at Silvercup Studios in Long Island City, N.Y., Myers noted that the agency team wanted to use a real subway, fearing a set would appear fake.
“I had serious doubts we were going to be able to replicate a subway,” said agency producer Guy Williams. But he and the team were convinced by Pellington and his set designer, Richard Piekos, that a set would be the better route.
“It would have been a nightmare to try and do this on a real subway,” Pellington said. He added that Piekos created a convincing subway car as well as a passenger platform that allowed the car to move into the station and the doors to open, so that the IKEA remodeling trio could move through turnstiles and enter the subway car. Pellington explained that both Piekos and Bukowski have feature film experience and know how to create a realistic look.
As for the editing, Pellington said he planned the shoot to give the agency a variety of scenes in order to give them maximum options.
Williams praised Pellington’s work, saying the director “was always one step ahead, he knew what he wanted and how to achieve it with both style and originality
