Ah the simple pleasures of a desert roadway—wholly devoid of traffic and brilliantly lit by a flaming afternoon sun. It’s the perfect setting for a car commercial. Perhaps a little too perfect given that seemingly every other auto spot these days features a gorgeously filmed montage of the merchandise stirring up large brown streaks of high performance dust contrails.
The setting for the new Mini Cooper spot "Breeze," created by Crispin Porter+Bogusky (CP+B), Miami, is every bit the closed desert course typical of so many current car commercials. The spot’s action, though, presents a relaxing twist on the industry-standard of fast and furious stunt footage.
Instead of featuring a professional driver out to break the North American land speed record, "Breeze" presents an average guy out for a leisurely cruise in his Mini. He’s got sunshine, open road and some friends along as passengers. Thus, without ever breaking the speed limit, director/DP Warren Kushner of bicoastal Bedford Falls manages to have us wishing that we too were along for the Mini outing.
The spot opens on a tight shot of a man driving his Mini Cooper. The camera is positioned in front of the car, so that we see only the vehicle’s right side. The camera pulls back a bit as the music track’s laid-back guitar strumming begins. The man, clearly out for a joy ride, puts his hand out the window to enjoy some aerodynamic fun.
The next shot yields some stunning landscape scenery, as the Mini motors by some desert rock formations. By the look of the light, it’s getting on towards late afternoon. Furthering the relaxed feel of the spot, the driver glances out the window at a stark but beautiful desert panorama.
The driver wears a look of dreamy contentedness—the kind of look that comes from driving on a deserted highway near sunset with friends. But is he alone?
Now it’s revealed that the man is traveling with a dog, who is clearly relishing the ride as well. What’s more, we next see that his cat is also along for the cruise.
We pull back to a wider shot of cat and dog enjoying the breeze—the dog has his arm stretched out over the window. The action fades to a simple graphic reading "nothing will ever be the same," which quickly yields back to a wide shot of the Mini—cat and dog still looking out the window—motoring on out of sight. The spot closes on a Mini graphic reminding us of its status as 2003 North American Car of the Year.
SIMPLE CREATIVE;
SOLID RESULTS
Asked to elaborate on the ad’s creative strategy, CP+B associate creative director/copywriter Rob Strasberg told SHOOT that the creative was as straight-forward as it appeared onscreen: "Since the spot was named ‘Breeze,’ it needed to have that warm afternoon feeling," Strasberg related. "The other thought was to portray the Mini as the sort of car that makes even a cat want to get out and motor."
In selecting a director for the project, Strasberg said he found Kushner through the recommendation of colleague Pete Favat—a group creative director at Arnold Worldwide, Boston. "Pete and I had been doing some ‘Truth’ [anti-smoking] work together, and he passed along Warren’s reel," Strasberg continued. "We really liked Warren’s perspective: He was able to set the right mood and make it all come together."
Kushner also directed two additional Mini spots for CP+B in addition to "Breeze": the :30 "Carbonation" and another, as yet unnamed, :30 set to be released later this year.
For his part, Kushner said his main goal was to live up to the spirit of some earlier Mini work directed by Baker Smith of Harvest, Santa Monica. However, far from attempting to draw on directorial influences for the spot, Kushner said he tried to stay true to his own conception of what the footage should look like: "What I ended up doing is putting on a pair of donkey blinds: the [devices] that won’t allow a donkey to look left or right—only ahead of itself. I just put them on and went for it."
Kushner scouted several locations in the Los Angeles area, and originally wanted to film the spot with the Pacific Ocean in the background. That was before Kushner visited a site in Joshua Tree National Park—located near Twentynine Palms, Calif.—that he realized would be an ideal stretch of road. "It’s a very special place," Kushner said. "That location really made the spot."
Having worked as a camera assistant for the late director Paul Giraud, Kushner said he was comfortable shooting a major automobile spot. By all accounts the shoot was a smooth one with the exception of a few minor difficulties with the canine talent.
"We expected an easier part of the shoot would be getting the dog to put his head out the window for the last shot—but he was so well trained he’d only look at a piece of meat on his trainer’s stick. It was the first dog in the world I’d seen that didn’t want to stick its head out a car window! … Since we weren’t getting the last shot, we ended up scouring the town for anything with fluff or hair, and ended up buying about fifteen different stuffed animals. We all met in my motel room, and it was like a Hitchcock movie: We were mutilating all these little stuffed animals to get something that resembled a dog."
"We ended up making this sort of Frankenstein monster bulldog out of all this material," continued Kushner. "Then we painted it to match the dog’s coloring. … It was half Chihuahua, half tiger half mouse. We also used a ball of gray and white fluff to stand in for the cat on that shot," Kushner laughed.
Patchwork bulldogs aside, Kushner called the project an extremely gratifying mix of "performance and visual elements," and said he’d love to direct more of the same type in the future.
MELLOW MUSIC
Almost as important as the Mini’s four cylinders in driving the spot along was a music track composed by New York-based Bang Music’s composer/senior producer Brian Jones, with lyrics from company president/creative director Lyle Greenfield. A laid-back, guitar driven effort with a relaxed vocal from Jones himself in the background, it’s the sort of song Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground might have made if they were based in the California desert instead of lower Manhattan.
The lyrics convey a sense of leisurely gratification. The chorus gently implores us to "Do what you wanna do/ and say what you wanna say/ Even if you don’t know if you’re sure, you know what feels good."
Said Greenfield, "The idea of the spot was to show a blissful experience that doesn’t need to be explained by a voiceover. … We submitted several tracks, and this one was by far our favorite. We’re glad [the agency] agreed with us."
