When execs at Bartle Bogle Hegarty, London, asked director Rupert Sanders to put an Audi atop the world’s largest Ferris wheel, he didn’t even consider using CGI. "I think that computer generation is a very overused technique," explains the director, who helms ads in the U.S. through Omaha Pictures, Santa Monica, and in Europe and the U.K. through Outsider, London. "To me, what’s amazing about a spectacle is really believing it."
So, with the help of a specially designed ramp and an extensive crew, Sanders placed an Audi in one of the pods of the London Eye—a.k.a. The Millennium Wheel—and shot it over a four-day period. The resulting spot, "Eye," which was produced through Outsider, was recently released in the U.K. Suspended over the London skyline within the glass pod of the Ferris wheel, the Audi A2 looks likes something out of a science-fiction blockbuster.
From the beginning of the process, Sanders knew what he was after in the ad. "I wanted to do it at night, and I wanted to start it with this abstract cityscape with a kind of 2001 glass sphere in the sky," he explains. "And then you’d start seeing the car, and it would look very like Ben Obi Wan Kanobi [from Star Wars] standing out on the Death Star. I didn’t want it shot in the sun, where you’d see the River Thames with the red busses and Big Ben in the background. I wanted to make it a lot more abstract at the front, and then you’d gradually be able to see what’s happening and where the car is."
For Sanders, shooting "Eye" was a real highlight. "We started filming at eleven at night and finished at five in the morning," he relates. "It was really amazing to be up there and to see London in a way that no one else does, except for probably the technicians, because [the London Eye] is not open then."
Of course, the automobile remained in the pod for one week, even when the Eye was open. And, Sanders reports, it caused quite a stir. "It was just spinning around on its own, and people were getting in and out of the pods next to it with a confused look on their faces, thinking, ‘There’s a car next to me.’ "
As the shoot for "Eye" shows, Sanders will go through a lot of effort to get the right look. A former graphic design major whose artwork has been displayed at the Los Angeles Design Museum, Sanders is known for his visually arresting, often cinematic, style. "I think a script is the basic format of an idea, and then it’s up to a director to illustrate that idea," he observes. "I don’t want to just repeat the words in pictures. One sentence can mean a thousand images."
Frequent Flyer
Sanders traveled around the world to find striking images for "Different Planet," which he shot earlier this year for Genie, a division of British Telecommunications, out of Abbott Mead Vickers/BBDO, London. In the ad, footage of people moving through various city streets, subway tunnels and offices accompanies a haunting, whispered voiceover by actress Tilda Swinton, describing how Genie can help connect people across the globe. Thanks to the use of time-lapse photography, the spot has an otherworldly quality—highly appropriate, considering its tagline: "Same World, Different Planet."
Before he began shooting, Sanders enlisted the help of feature film cinematographer Ron Fricke (Baraka, the upcoming Megalopolis); Fricke is also repped as a commercial director, through bicoastal Believe Media. "I got in touch with Ron, and he came with us," recalls Sanders. "There were two units of us, and we spent about a month traveling from Hong Kong to Los Angeles to New York to London to Mexico City."
Initially, all Sanders knew was that he wanted "do some time-lapse stuff to show the mechanics of the streets, and the tide of people moving." While Sanders says that Fricke "knew some good stuff to shoot in Los Angeles and New York," he notes that the shoot involved a lot of on-the-scene discovery. "We pooled our information, and then went to those cities and explored them. We wanted to film people being pushed through life."
In the Mexico City subway tunnels, Sanders and company found exactly that. "There were about five thousand people in each tunnel," he recalls, "a slow tide of people drifting towards us. It was really amazing."
Often, director and crew would simply "find good streets and sit there and film people. Then, we’d release-form them as they went past."
Sanders, who thrives on spontaneity, counts the "Different Planet" shoot as one of his favorites. And he was equally pleased with the completed commercial. "I didn’t want to just see gray-faced commuters coming over bridges, which is our staple diet in Britain," he says. "I wanted to capture city life from a very different [perspective,] and I think we were able to do that."
Sanders states that he owes a lot to the "great creatives" at Abbott Mead Vickers. "It really helps if someone gives you that trust and gives you the freedom to do what you do best, instead of always questioning or trying to do things one way."
Sanders graduated from London’s St. Martins College with a graphic design degree in 1994. One year later, he signed with Tony Kaye & Partners (now Tony K), West Hollywood and London, on the strength of a spec spot called "Just Don’t Walkman" that he shot for Sony Walkman. The ad was actually used by the client for air on television and in movie theaters in the U.K. Since then, Sanders has helmed spots in both Britain and the U.S. for such clients as Nike, Guinness and UPS.
A new commercial for Hewlett-Packard, "Coffee Table," which Sanders directed for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, had a similar shoot to that of "Different Planet," in that he and his crew had flexibility with their locations. In the ad, a man takes digital photos of his coffee table—which is a white hand holding up a piece of round glass—at places like an amusement where it appears that the table is holding up a merry-go-round, and on an urban sidewalk, where is looks as though a man is being held aloft by the hand. He compiles all of his images into a book called, appropriately enough, The Coffee Table Book. "It was quite freeform in a way," Sanders relates of the spot. "It wasn’t storyboarded that heavily. We just chose areas and went to them. It was quite a matter of using the environment that we went to. As opposed to being very rigid, we let it happen."
On all of his projects Sanders works hard to achieve his unique vision. He recently completed "Garage" and "Showdown" for Honda, out of Rubin Postaer and Associates, Santa Monica, and the latter entailed an all-night shoot. "We tried to get away from the average car commercial, which is such an overplayed formula," he says of the ads, which broke in early October. "It’s not too polished—it’s quite dark and, hopefully, a bit more interesting."
It was definitely a lot more exhausting. "I keep shooting myself in the foot," he laughs. "I’m making myself work all these hellish hours."
