For cinematographer Jim Hawkinson, shooting the latest Snapple campaign was like a breath of fresh air. Hawkinson, who is represented by Innovative Artists, Santa Monica, had spent the past year filming large-scale music videos back-to-back with director Dave Meyers of F.M. Rocks, Santa Monica. When the opportunity arose to work with miniatures in a tabletop setting, Hawkinson welcomed the change—and the challenge.
The Snapple campaign, a deliberately low-tech affair featuring Snapple bottles dressed up in doll’s clothes, didn’t necessarily fall within Hawkinson’s realm of experience. Consider a recent shoot he did for the Creed song "My Sacrifice," directed by Meyers. The music video takes place on a flooded street with Creed front-man Scott Stapp singing from a small boat while various people and oddities float by in the water. Trying to light people who are on top of water, while not getting the camera wet, made the Snapple job look like a vacation. Not that those little bottles didn’t present their own set of challenges.
The idea behind the latest Snapple work, out of Deutsch, New York, was to make the ads look like some Snapple fanatic dressed the bottles up in Barbie clothes to videotape his own ad campaign. For instance, in "Shower," two boy bottles (we know they’re boys by their carefully picked outfits and wigs) peep through a hole in a broom closet into the girls’ locker room where several Snapple bottles with long hair (and sans labels) are taking showers. The girls’ gym teacher breaks up the party, but before we can see the consequences, a Snapple bottle cap fills the screen, making its signature popping sound. In "House Party," a high school bash is in full swing, complete with toilet paper on the trees and the hostess making out with her boyfriend. But the girl bottle’s fun doesn’t last long after her parents come home early and bust up the party.
These and more adolescent-themed spots—"Boy Band," "Skateboard," "UFO," and "Breakdance"—constitute a campaign that took some meticulous puppeteering and shooting to pull off.
Before the production got underway, Hawkinson sat down with the campaign’s helmers—the directing team of Dayton/Faris (Jonathan and Valerie, respectively) of bicoastal Bob Industries, to discuss different ways of shooting the bottles. "We talked about whether we were going to shoot on film and then make it look like video later," recalls Hawkinson. Instead, the crew opted for a tiny video camera, which Dayton/Faris had used before; Hawkinson likens the device to a spy camera. "It’s sort of like a lipstick cam, but this one was more square and you could change lenses," he says, noting that he had access to a zoom lens and a few focal lengths, including 3.5mm, 4mm, 8mm and 12mm.
Adjusting to the camera was a bit of a challenge for the DP, who, admittedly, was used to working with a 35mm motion picture film camera. To familiarize himself with the smaller device—and to get the look the directors were after—Hawkinson ran some tests with it before the Snapple shoot started. "Originally, we were going to shoot a lot of it hand-held for an even more amateurish quality," reports Hawkinson, "but it just got really distracting because it was jittery and all over the place."
In order to establish a balance between the raw look the directors were after and something that could actually work for broadcast television, Hawkinson used lighting to find the middle ground. "I had the light working in a kind of logical way," he explains. "[For instance, in ‘Shower,’] the shower was going to be brighter than the room the guys are peeking through, and when the door opens there had to be a hallway light that hits them. If it had actually been done by somebody in their garage, they might not have gotten the lighting ratios as in balance as I did. But to me, the amateurish aspect of it is that it’s being shot on primitive video technology."
Hawkinson started out as many DPs do—at film school. He attended Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, Calif., where he graduated in 1987 with a BFA in film. From there, he says, "I bought a tool belt and started making phone calls," and got employment as a lighting technician, working for 10 years on various feature films, documentaries and music videos, while trying to moonlight as a cinematographer. He also had stints as a gaffer at now defunct Boss Film Studios. By ’97, Hawkinson was able to give up the lighting gig to concentrate on a full-time career as a music video DP, and his work began airing steadily on MTV.
His big commercial break came in late ’97, with a Miller Lite ad called "Bob’s Bobsled Bar," directed by Enda McCallion, then of bicoastal HSI Productions (he is now with Ritts/Hayden, Los Angeles), out of Fallon McElligott (now Fallon), Minneapolis. "Up until then, I had just done some regional [spot] work and PSAs," explains Hawkinson. "This was my first national campaign."
These days, Hawkinson boasts an extensive commercial reel for clients such as Morgan Stanley, Fanta, Comedy Central and Bud Light. He frequently works with directors like McCallion, Meyers, and Paul Fedor of bicoastal/international Partizan. The Snapple campaign was Hawkinson’s first collaboration with Dayton/Faris, and at press time, the DP had just finished shooting two jobs with director John Dolan of bicoastal Anonymous Content: a couple of spots for Visa and one for Oreos.
And Hawkinson still works on music videos, filming clips for the likes of Creed, No Doubt, Missy Elliott and Pink, to name a few. In ’98 Hawkinson won top honors in the cinematography category from the Music Videos Production Association (MVPA) for Tool’s "Aenema," directed by Adam Jones, the band’s guitar player.
With his constant exposure to the machinations of the production world, does Hawkinson ever have that itch to direct? His answer: no. "I really enjoy being a DP, because I love collaborating with these directors and helping them achieve their vision," he explains. "If I started directing, I would be missing that."
So perhaps it’s the love of the job that allows Hawkinson to finagle any camera angle necessary, handle any lens big or small. "I believe that the cinematography should support the story," he asserts. "So if it’s more high-key and on video that’s facilitating the story, then that’s the choice I’m going to make."
