A change of living space as reflected in Audi spot, new commercialmaking roost
By Millie Takaki
A year ago Jason Smith moved from London to L.A., underscoring his stepped up commitment to the American ad market. He has since placed two punctuation marks on that commitment, recently helming via Bob Industries, his home of the past nine years, the tour de force Audi A4 “Living Room” spot out of Venables, Bell & Partners, San Francisco–and then leaving Bob, a company he co-founded, to join bicoastal/international HSI Productions for worldwide representation. The latter move also ends Smith’s U.K. representation via Home Corp. in London.
The visually ground-breaking Audi commercial moves us through a living room that elegantly modernizes before our eyes in a single camera move, eventually revealing the new Audi A4 in the driveway, dovetailing with the “Progress is beautiful” slogan.
“The spot entailed a motion control move with two separate sets that we built, a combination of in-camera effects, animation and CG from [Santa Monica VFX studio] Method. It was a highly complex camera move achieved in one shot, which is unlike anything done before,” related Smith. “That was the prime appeal for me–to collaborate and problem solve in order to do something that hadn’t been done previously.”
“Living Room,” which earned the number two slot in SHOOT’s quarterly Visual Effects and Animation Top Ten Chart earlier this month (10/10), continues a string of Smith-directed work for San Francisco agencies. Among the other Bay Area ad shops with which Smith has recently collaborated are Heat on a shoot for EA, and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners on Sprint’s “People Mover.”
As for coming aboard HSI, Smith related that he felt the need for a change after nine years at Bob. Though he described departing Bob as “a difficult decision,” he was drawn to HSI’s reputation and the opportunity to consolidate his stateside and international activity under the aegis of one house.
Clip catalyst Dating back to his days at the now defunct Propaganda Films, Smith developed a reputation as a visual storyteller. While that still very much applies today as evidenced by “Living Room,” he has since extended his directorial reach into actor performance-driven narrative work.
Key in helping him diversify further into that arena was a music video, “Late At Night,” for the band Electronic. The clip centered on a group of thugs wreaking havoc in London.
“It was one of the darkest pieces of work that I had done to that date,” recalled Smith. “But agencies saw it and came to me with storytelling campaigns, including work for Coke and Sony PlayStation.”
The latter, “Getaway 2” out of TBWALondon, was an ironic, dark spot which depicts a London tourism film that goes very wrong to the tune of “London Bridge Is Falling Down.” Well received in Europe, the spot performed well on the industry awards show circuit, including gaining recognition at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.
Smith’s actor-driven storytelling acumen is also reflected in such spots as the humorous “Buzzer” for Kia out of Deutsch LA, in which people from different walks of life are pretending they’re basketball players, throwing objects into various make-shift or imagined “baskets” to beat the game-ending buzzer as they go through their otherwise mundane daily routines. The spot promotes automotive company Kia Motors’ sponsorship of the National Basketball Association.
Among Smith’s other notable U.S. ad credits over the years are a Major League Baseball campaign out of Lowe, New York, a visually innovative Mitsubishi Endeavor commercial, “Street Level” (a live-action/effects combo accomplishment akin to the earlier cited Living Room” for Audi–both entailed his collaborating with VFX house Method) via Deutsch LA, which earned SHOOT “Top Spot” distinction, and Nike’s “Covert Texas” for Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore.
The latter, which received an Association of Independent Commerical Producers (AICP) Show honor, opens with Tour de France champ Lance Armstrong biking on a panoramic, mountain road. As he pedals along, a cargo truck approaches from behind and, honking wildly, tries to pass. Annoyed by one another’s presence, the trucker and the biker begin a game of who can pass whom–much in the tradition of the film Duel, the ’71 made-for-television movie that was helmed by Steven Spielberg in which a man in an automobile is being stalked by the driver of a big rig truck.
At one point, when Armstrong is riding alongside the truck, it crowds him off the lane. Armstrong then races back up to the truck, bumps it with his arm–the one wearing the Nike watch–and sends the multi-ton vehicle over the side of the cliff, where it explodes. The commercial ends with a shot of Armstrong’s Nike XTR Covert watch–which survived the battle unscathed.
Though Smith hasn’t helmed a music video in some time, he would now like to rekindle that flame for select ambitious projects and reasoned that HSI could facilitate that wish. Smith said he continues to be drawn to the narrative prospects that certain music video concepts carry.
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