David Henegar, who cuts spots out of Uppercut Editorial, Minneapolis, employs a modus operandi that’s become increasingly rare: He listens and learns. He discovered its advantages while working at Assembly Line, the in-house editing facility of ad agency Fallon, Minneapolis.
"When I was quiet and learning," recalls Henegar, who worked at the Fallon facility from 1996 to ’99, "Bruce Bildsten and Tom Lichtenheldacreative group heads on the BMW accountataught me an awful lot about composition, pacing and the fundamentals of good editorial."
The practice paid off after Henegar joined Uppercut a year ago. His work on BMW’s "Spring Skiing," directed by Laurence Dunmore of bicoastal RSA USA, out of Fallon, was honored in the editorial category at the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Show at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. The spot was part of a campaign that aired on last January’s Super Bowl broadcast to introduce the auto manufacturer’s X5 Sport Activity Vehicle (SAV), a sort of mini SUV. It was a project that Henegar had no part in until a call for help came his way.
"That spot was originally edited by another house," Henegar recalls, "and it just wasn’t working. Fallon let me take the film and I cut it in a way the storyboards had never intended. Originally, the skier started at the top and simply went to the bottom. My edit was much more ethereal and dreamy. I changed the pacing to bring out emotions in a way that was never planned. It ended up being very successful for them, and for me too."
"Spring Skiing" and its companion spot, "Woods," show people in exterior action situations (skiing downhill during a spring thaw, jumping into a fast-flowing stream) before the BMW X5 is revealed. The spots equate feeling the wonder of nature with the feeling one gets from the SAV.
The commercials have no voiceover, only the natural sounds of the outdoors and the BMW X5. Henegar calls it "the whisper effect," and is proud that he proposed it. "It was a big year for dot-com spots [on the Super Bowl]. I felt that there was going to be a lot of noise, a lot of jokes and attention-getting sound," he explains. "So I suggested that we go with the least amount of sound we can get away with and vary it, so that when it’s sandwiched between two noisy commercials, it may quiet the room down and get everybody to listen. We went in that direction and it ended up in the sound design category too [at the AICP Show]." (The spot honored in the sound design category at the MoMA Show was "Spring Skiing," with design by Henegar and Carl White of Echo Boys, Minneapolis, the audio division of Minneapolis-based edit firm Crash & Sue’s.)
