Bicoastal/international Propaganda Films and sister company Satellite have teamed with Rock The Vote on a thought provoking five-spot campaign targeted at young Americans and designed to assure them that their vote matters.
Primarily run on MTV leading up to the recent national election, but available to other networks, the civic-minded campaign also served to showcase some of Propaganda/Satellite’s up-and-coming directorial talent. The commercials were firsts for several of these directors, who were recruited throughout the year from the fields of feature film, broadcast television and music video.
Satellite’s Jason Wulfsohn directed "Prison." The rest were helmed by Propaganda talent: Nzingha Stewart directed "Supreme Court"; Jamie Babbit did "Tic Toc"; Greg Harrison directed "Hypocrisy" and the team of Kim Jacobs and Alain Briere, a.k.a. Jacobs/Briere, helmed "Gas Station" and "Pharmacy."
Established a decade ago, Rock The Vote runs an annual campaign, but this time around the scale was enlarged for the national election. Colin Hickson, VP of commercials at Propaganda, said that the importance of social issues among young people made it a great cause for Propaganda/Satellite’s young filmmakers to get involved with. While Rock The Vote has worked with Propaganda before, this year’s involvement was the most extensive.
Hickson worked closely with Alison Byrne Fields, chief strategist and creative director of Rock The Vote, to develop the broader topic areas, and the directors were given free rein to come up with treatments and write the scripts. When a particular director had a natural affinity for a subject, these were matched up, related Hickson. "Some of the directors had specific ideas, a couple collided, so we presented Rock The Vote with a collection of scripts to chose from," he said.
The budget for each spot was around $35,000-$40,000. Each ad addresses an issue such as racial profiling, spending on schools versus prisons, or campaign contributions by big business, and leads up to a question for "Mr. Candidate"—an approach designed to add some continuity to the campaign.
GREG HARRISON
"Hypocrisy" deals with a topic that Harrison feels very passionate about: harsh penalties for first-time drug users. After showing microfiche of actual newspaper clippings in which politicians—including presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore—admit to drug use in their youth, the spot moves on to another clip. This one shows a young girl whose financial aid was suspended after drug use. The concluding question: "Mr. Candidate. Why don’t the same rules apply to you?"
Harrison—who works in conjunction with producer Danielle Renfrew—said the spot was inspired by people he met when making his debut feature film, Groove, which follows one night on the San Francisco underground rave scene. After its screening at the Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah, this past January, Sony Pictures Classics purchased Groove for $1.5 million, and Propaganda signed Harrison for commercials, music videos and a first-look deal for all short formats.
NZINGHA STEWART
"Supreme Court Justice" uses digital stills inside a bodega to represent issues over which the court has jurisdiction. Considering the fact that the President of the U.S. nominates Supreme Court judges, director Stewart dealt with issues that those judges rule on. Hip-hop artists Common and Rah Digga walk through the aisles choosing products which have issues—such as gay and lesbian rights, privacy, civil rights and capital punishment—in place of brand names.
At the end, a sign asks: "Mr. Candidate, will you choose a Supreme Court Justice?" "I was trying to figure out a way to show all those issues, and to show people thinking about them. The most graphic and memorable way seemed to be showing a supermarket where you can see in big, popular icons what issues are actually on the market, and what issues we should be choosing among—almost the way you would chose what brand of cereal you buy," explained Stewart.
As for the value of Rock The Vote, Stewart said: "So many sacrifices were made to win the right to vote that I think people should care more about it and take a stronger interest in, rather than feeling like their one vote doesn’t count."
Stewart signed with Propaganda in January and "Supreme Court Justice" is her first commercial. Prior to this, she was a freelance music director and had helmed music videos for artists including Digital Underground, Capone-N-Noreaga, Common and Rah Digga.
JAMIE BABBIT
Babbit described "Tic Toc" as being the "angry spot." Its genesis was a poetry slam for high school kids in Los Angeles. "It was all very grass roots and low budget," she recalls. "I had seen the kids perform and thought they were so talented and had such untapped talent that it would be great to do a spot featuring them." The narrative running through "Tic Toc" is actually the words of a poem penned by one of the young men from the poetry slam, Dante Bosco. In the spot, a multiethnic teenage boy drives through the streets, reciting the poem. He passes police frisking an Hispanic boy, who takes over the narrative. Towards the end, a police car signals for the first teen to stop.
Babbit pointed out that rage was a huge part of these kids’ poetry and she felt it was important to address this in the commercial. "Kids aren’t voting because they are so angry and feel so disfranchised. Especially in Los Angeles and other urban centers, the political process and the government have only represented bad things to them," contended Babbit. "Basically I wanted to do a spot that touched on their anger, and also to say that kids will vote if politicians address [relevant issues]."
Babbit came to the attention of Propaganda when her feature was screened at Sundance. She co-wrote—with Brian Wayne Peterson—and directed the satirical film entitled But I’m a Cheerleader. It’s about a naïve teenager who is sent to a rehabilitation camp when her parents and friends suspect her of being a lesbian.
"Tic Toc" was Babbit’s first commercial. Babbit worked on features for 10 years. Her credits include serving as an intern on Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, production assistant on the John Sayles-directed The Secret of Roan Inish, and script supervisor on David Fincher’s The Game. She has also made two short films: Sleeping Beauty and Frog Crossing.
JACOBS/BRIERE
"There was a real need to address the fact that kids feel their votes are meaningless against big business," assessed Kim Jacobs, half of Jacobs/ Briere. The two signed with Propaganda in June, shifting over from X-1 Films, bicoastal and Chicago, where they directed commercials for clients that included Merrill Lynch via J. Walter Thompson, New York. Jacobs and Briere met in the mid-’90s, while studying at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, Calif.
Rock The Vote’s "Pharmacy" and "Gas Station" were made to be either stand-alone spots or to run together.
The former shows a girl entering a pharmacy in a wheelchair (after ending up in the emergency room following a snowboarding accident), her leg broken right up to the hip. When she tries to buy some painkillers, her credit card is declined. Unable to afford the $352.40, she goes inside a voting booth. A billboard appears on screen, stating, "The pharmaceutical industry gave $1,019,690 to members of the Senate in 1999." It’s followed by the question, "Mr. Candidate, are you letting big business run your business?"
Similarly, in "Gas Station" a teenage boy who only has $5 in cash is trying to barter his mobile phone, his brother’s car, and his asthma ventilator, to pay his walloping $65.59 gas bill. Eventually he gives up trying to satisfy the surly attendant, instructing him to siphon off the tank. The youngster goes into a voting booth. A billboard reads, "The oil industry gave $1,450,831.00 to members of the Senate in 1999," followed by the question for Mr. Candidate.
JASON WULFSOHN
Wulfsohn has always admired the Rock The Vote campaign. "I think I do my best work as a director when I really care about an idea, which is why I was so keen to get involved. It’s a shame that there is so much apathy among voters, and among young people in particular."
"Prison" shows visual comparisons between an inner city school and a state-of-the-art prison, with a voiceover linking the two worlds. The point is that if more money were spent on education, there would be less need for prisons.
"We wanted to encourage people to engage in the debate, rather than coming down on one side of the issue or the other," stated Wulfsohn. "We wanted to say this is an issue that young people care about, and if you do get involved in the political process, you can have an impact on that issue … you can exercise your right to vote."
Wulfsohn signed with Satellite this summer. Prior to that, he was represented by Propaganda Management as a feature director. He is also a writer and is represented by International Creative Management in London. He is set to work early next year on a feature called Johnny Domino—a vampire horror movie produced via the London-based Roc Media—and through Propaganda is developing a feature-length drama called The Silence. Prior to Satellite, he had been working on commercials for a year through his own production company, Jam Media, Los Angeles.
