Five years ago when he was a creative at The Martin Agency, Richmond, Va., Alon Shoval reached a personal, life-threatening crossroads. Helping him get through the crisis–which entailed the removal of one of his lungs–was thinking about what he would look forward to if he survived: becoming a parent. He did indeed survive, met his wife-to-be and now has two kids.
The notion of expressing what you would want to accomplish or experience–from a simple everyday pleasure to the lifetime commitment of parenthood–when facing your mortality stuck with Shoval, providing the creative inspiration for a campaign he recently conceived of for Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic.
Shoval served not only as executive creative director and writer on the work for Hill Holliday Connors Cosmopulos, New York, but also as director of four TV spots. The package marked his full fledged directorial debut, produced by The Mothership, a new bicoastal shop which specializes in facilitating helming endeavors for ad agency creatives.
Shoval talked with Cleveland Clinic patients who shared their aspirations with him. Based on their stories, Shoval wrote letters that expressed what several patients hoped to experience once they were healthy again. He penned these letters from a patient perspective. One such letter told the story of a man who wanted to return to performing music–it became the script for the Cleveland Clinic commercial titled “Piano.”
The spot opens with a camera slowly moving around a piano, almost romancing it as a male voiceover relates, “Forgive me. A decade has passed in silence for I couldn’t chain your melody with my Parkinson’s.
“But soon,” continues the voiceover confidently, “my brain will send tiny electronic notes to my fingers and bend them to my will as before. Let the neighbors bang on the walls. I will play fortissimo all night long.”
The camera moves to reveal the keyboard, and a pair of hands enters the picture and begins to play.
A female voice then intervenes, “Find the confidence to face any condition….”
She then completes the sentence with “–at Cleveland Clinic.”
An end tag carries the Cleveland Clinic logo, accompanied by the slogan, “A world leader in deep brain stimulation,” and a Web site address (ClevelandClinic.org/LettersToTomorrow).
Several letters crafted by Shoval appear on the Web site. But now these writings are eliciting letters from others who are ill yet positively looking ahead to their lives after recovery from whatever malady has stricken them. This entire campaign–including the TV spots and the Web portion–isn’t so much about the Cleveland Clinic, which Shoval describes as a wonderful nurturing place for patients, but rather about providing hope and inspiration for people facing health crises.
“Patients are helping patients and the Web site is a meeting place for people to gain positive inspiration and to cope with their situations. That’s what makes this so gratifying creatively. The campaign is helping people. Thinking about what you would do once you are healthy again is a powerful force that helps people pull through a crisis.”
Indeed the Web component–the centerpiece of which is a book of letters–is proving to have a profound and positive impact on patients’ lives and their outlook for the future. Driving traffic to that site are print, radio and TV ads. The latter were the spots “Marathon,” “Fetch,” “Playground” and the aforementioned “Piano,” all of which are cut from the same motivational cloth.
In “Marathon,” for example, we see a pair of sneakers slowly descend before our eyes. A voiceover relates, “I’ve done it every year with my own lungs. This year I’m going to do it with someone else’s. The operation is tomorrow. And my first day of training will be after that. Even if it’s just one step out of bed. And the next day one more step down the hall. I’m going to make it to the finish line. See you in November New York Marathon.”
The Hill Holliday team consisted of Shoval, art director Simon Grendene and producer Kelly Walsh.
Tara Fitzpatrick and Tom Mooney executive produced for The Mothership, a venture of Venice-based PYTKA. Gary Romano served as producer on the job. Shoval said that The Mothership was very supportive of his directorial endeavor. The DP was Simon Coull.
Lucas Spaulding of Bug Editorial, New York, cut the commercials. Tom Poole of The Mill, New York, was the colorist. Audio engineers were Carl Mandelbaum and Hillary Kew of audioEngine, New York.
Shoval hopes to build upon the integrated campaign. One possibility is a documentary following several patients through their ordeal to hopefully a tomorrow when they can experience the aspirations expressed in their letters.
“Atropia” and “Twinless” Win Marquee Prizes At Sundance Film Festival
The war satire “Atropia,” about actors in a military role-playing facility, won the grand jury prize in the Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. dramatic competition, while the Dylan O’Brien movie “Twinless” got the coveted audience award.
Juries and programmers for the 41st edition of the independent film festival announced the major prizewinners Friday in Park City, Utah.
Other grand jury winners included the documentaries “Seeds,” about farmers in rural Georgia and “Cutting Through the Rocks,” about the first elected councilwoman in an Iranian village. The Indian drama “Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears),” about a city dweller mourning his father in the western Indian countryside, won the top prize in the world cinema competition.
“It’s for my dad,” said writer and director Rohan Parashuram Kanawade. His late father, he said, was the one who encouraged him to pursue filmmaking.
Audiences also get to vote on their own awards, where James Sweeney’s “Twinless,” about the bromance between two men who meet in a twin bereavement support group, triumphed in the U.S. dramatic category. O’Brien also won a special jury award for his acting.
The U.S. documentary audience award went to “André is an Idiot,” a life-affirming film about dying of colon cancer. Other audience picks were “Prime Minister,” about former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and “DJ Ahmet,” a coming-of-age film about a 15-year-old boy in North Macedonia.
Mstyslav Chernov, the Oscar-winning Associated Press journalist, won the world cinema documentary directing award for his latest dispatch from Ukraine, “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” a joint production between the AP and PBS Frontline.
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