The three honorees in the animation category at the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Show, The Art and Technique of the American Television Commercial, demonstrate the variety of techniques and styles in animated commercials today. "Come Home" for Budweiser, out of DDB Chicago, is live action with CG effects. "Honey Bare" for General Mills Chex Mix, via Campbell Mithun, Minneapolis, is straight stop motion. And "Randy’s Secret," for FOX Sports out of FCB San Francisco, is a mix of live action and stop motion in a clay animated style.
What the directors of those spots have in common is a high regard for AICP Show recognition. For Shaun Sewter, the animation director on "Honey Bare," the honor is the first for his new animation house, Holy Cow Spots, Burbank, Calif. Rick Schulze of Industrial Light+Magic Commercial Productions (ILMCP), Los Angeles and San Rafael, Calif., director of "Come Home," believes that the AICP Show now outweighs the Clios. "It actually holds more credibility in a way," he states. "I certainly appreciate it and feel honored to have received it." And David Daniels of Vinton Studios, Portland, Ore., who directed "Randy’s Secret," says he knows the award is significant because of the favorable reactions he’s gotten from others in the business.
Each of the three directors brings a different approach to his craft, and they talked with SHOOT about their careers and current work shortly after the AICP ceremony.
David Daniels
David Daniels holds a BA in film from San Francisco State and a master’s from Cal Arts in experimental animation He created the acclaimed animated short Buzzbox in ’86; and worked on animated sequences for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and the music videos "Big Time" for Peter Gabriel, and "Moonwalker" for Michael Jackson. He got into commercials at the now defunct U.S. arm of production shop Limelight Commercials. Although at that point he was working mostly in clay animation, and Vinton Studios was best known for its clay animation, Daniels wasn’t brought in to work in that medium.
"[The studio] was looking to bring in other directors with different styles [at that time]," he recalls. "I did a lot of stylistically innovative work from 1992 to 1996. I brought in a lot of different art directors and DPs and other talent to really shake up the look."
When Vinton was awarded work for Mars/M&M, out of BBDO New York, Daniels directed the first 12 spots in CG animation, and played a key role in getting Vinton Studios’ computer department up and running.
Since about ’95, Daniels has focused more on work that depends on strong characterization, directing commercials employing a wide variety of CGI, stop motion, and mixed-media animation techniques. For example, Daniels directed eight FOX Sports promos for the ’99–’00 NFL season. The work featured stop-motion caricatures of FOX sportscasters Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, James Brown and Cris Collinsworth. The ads were done via FCB San Francisco.
"Brian Bacino [FCB creative director/copywriter] had the idea that dolls would be a funny way to go to make Howie, Terry and the rest of them," says Daniels. "The personas of these guys are pretty cartoonish as it is."
It was a FOX Sports promo for the most recently ended NFL season that garnered Daniels the AICP honor. For this go-round of promos, the agency added some live-action, mixed-media spots, one of which was the AICP Show-honored "Randy’s Secret," featuring Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Randy Moss. In the spot, the four announcers, as miniatures, sneak into Moss’ bed while he is sleeping to try to figure out what makes him so talented. When they wake the player, he goes a little berserk, and in a manic dance kicks them all out of bed.
"Randy did a great job," Daniels reports. "He is very natural in many ways. We didn’t have to do that many takes to get his reactions. He could visualize the characters really well."
Daniels emphasizes that a lot of planning goes into one of the mixed-media spots. "We try to storyboard it pretty thoroughly, more for the comedy than for technical reasons," he explains. "You want to keep the joke clear and get your timing right for the comedy to work as well as possible."
The agency creatives stay very involved in the live action, which in the case of "Randy’s Secret" was directed by Michael McNamara of Penumbra, San Francisco. "It’s a good, collaborative relationship," states Daniels. "I get the agency to act everything out with me and we shot on Hi-8 reference video to physically ask them, ‘OK, what do you think he’s going to be doing at this point? Act out Terry for us.’ And I’ll act it out myself and we’ll have other people like animators there, and we’ll all be giving comments on what we think is working and not working as far as the comedy. You shoot a lot of coverage. Once you’ve pre-visualized where you think everything is going to go, you’re within about five frames on either side of the final spot."
With no current plans in place for a third year of FOX spots, Daniels is on vacation, and working on feature film scripts. He expects to return to work at Vinton Studios. "I’m not ready to say I want to come back this month, or anything," he says. "But by the end of the year or early next we’ll find a project to get back together on."
Rick Schulze
Rick Schulze picked up animation through on-the-job training. He joined now defunct anmation house Ritter-Waxberg, doing entry-level work. A move to San Francisco, where he was freelancing, led to a job at now defunct (Colossal) Pictures, where he worked for several years, picking up various animation skills.
"It was a small company at that point and you had to do everything," recalls Schulze. "It was a great training ground."
In ’87 he moved to now defunct post house San Francisco Production Group, which had just bought an early 3-D animation system. "I was fascinated with video postproduction and video compositing, which was really coming into its own at that point," he recounts.
Back freelancing as an effects supervisor, mostly for ILMCP and (Colossal), Schulze saw some opportunities to direct at ILMCP, and expressed interest. "They said they would be glad to have me do that, but they’d have to put me on staff. So I went on staff in 1994, and I’ve been directing a variety of different things."
For the AICP Show-honored Budweiser "Come Home" spot, DDB relied heavily on Schulze’s mixed-media directing skills to tell the story of an alien creature who had been researching life on earth in the form of a house dog. What did he learn on earth? Just the line, "Whassup?"—a reference to the wildly popular Budweiser "Whassup" spots directed by Charles Stone III of Storm, Brooklyn, N.Y., out of DDB.
"In November, we received a tear sheet from the agency describing the story," Schulze says. "There were no boards attached, but the story was pretty clear about what they wanted. I put my spin on it and did some boards and we went back and forth. It was very collaborative. We developed a set of shooting boards. We adjusted the story a little, although it’s pretty close to their original concept."
A couple days of shooting by Shulze got the live action down, but the computer work took almost four months. "Everything in the back end of the spot was generated in CG," he explains. "There were no models built. Each of the elements needed to be built in the computer and painted and lit and all that stuff, which is pretty time consuming."
Carlos Huante, who designed many of the characters in Men in Black, designed the dog; art director Randy Gaul designed the space ship and the alien interiors.
The job was Schulze’s first with DDB, and he is currently bidding another Bud spot. "It was a good collaboration," he assesses. "We were originally going to have the alien a little creepier. [DDB group creative director] Don Pogany said, ‘It still has to come around to a comedy at the end,’ and we softened it up a little bit, which I think was a good call. They were fabulous. They gave me lots of rope to hang myself with."
Shaun Sewter
Shaun Sewter started as an assistant to a director of film special effects at Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, England. He got into commercials and music videos as a freelance animator in London. Sewter worked on the ’91 Academy Award-winning animated short Manipulation, directed by Daniel Greaves. After relocating to Los Angeles, he began directing out of now defunct The End, and later through bicoastal/international Chelsea Pictures. Earlier this year, he joined partner David Lyons in forming Holy Cow Spots, an extension of Lyons’ Holy Cow Stills which has offices in London, New York, and Burbank.
While at The End, Sewter directed "Matador" for Chex Mix—which like "Honey Bare," was done via Campbell Mithun, Minneapolis. The former is a stop-motion spot with a bull and matador built out of Chex Mix pieces. The job led to the AICP-honored "Honey Bare."
"We got ‘Honey Bare’ off the back of the first Chex Mix job," explains Sewter. "They were very happy with the first one, so it was a single bid when it came to ‘Honey Bare.’ [Campbell Mithun art director] Harry Gonnella called me and said, ‘We’re just starting the process, and we want you to be involved right at the beginning.’ He sent me a few initial boards and we worked out a board together, to-and-fro-ing. We revised it between us until he was happy with something he could send to the client."
The ad shows a bee’s nest, then a tree and finally a bear, all made of Chex Mix, growing from scratch and then collapsing into a bag of Honey Nut Chex Mix.
"After the job was awarded, we put together an animatic—just to work out exact timing and scene breakdowns, and what we needed for each shot as far as models," recalls Sewter. "We had to have two versions of the tree because in the beginning the tree builds. All of that was shot in reverse, so we had a lightweight breakaway version of the tree. We started with the whole thing fully up, with the bear at the bottom of the tree, which was a breakaway version, and then we just segmentally destroyed it. It was a little scary because it was a one-shot deal—if you messed it up you’d have to start it again."
In all, the spot was a 25-day shoot. "Normally, turnaround on a whole production is eight to ten weeks," Sewter says. "We’re doing another one right now for Chex Mix. Harry is involving me earlier and earlier in the process."
Sewter tends to work in a hands-on manner. "We work with a really small crew. Just a few model-makers, props guys and a guy who operates the camera for me and is also an animator," he notes. "I animate myself and I light myself."
He intends to stick with stop-motion animation, but he says he’s always looking for ways to push the technique. "In this industry, everybody always seems to be impatient for new stuff," he states. "So many times, we’ll get the call, ‘We’re looking for something different, something new.’ There’s always the pressure to look for new ways of doing what we do and taking it further. I want to keep the base in traditional stop-motion animation, but then explore new technologies, like computers."
