Readers of SHOOT’s "The Best Work You May Never See" gallery have no doubt noticed a number of regional spots in recent months supporting local anti-tobacco campaigns. One key element they have had in common is kidsayoung kids in spots aimed at getting parents and adults to kick the habit, and older kids urging teens not to start smoking. Agency creatives and directors say the main traits they look for in casting kids for those spots are believability and authenticity. "We look for kids who feel real, who feel like your friends," says Eric Hughes, VP/creative director at Maris, West & Baker (MW&B), Jackson, Miss. "When we sit and watch casting tapes, that’s the overriding questionado I believe the performance I’m seeing?" MW&B has been producing anti-tobacco spots for The Partnership For a Healthy Mississippi since October ’98, first in a campaign aimed at teens, and currently for the partnership’s "Reject All Tobacco" (R.A.T.) campaign aimed at six-to-11-year-olds.
"We’re trying to get them to remember a fact about tobacco, and teach up. Hopefully, they will go to their older brothers or sisters or parents and relay that fact," Hughes explains of R.A.T. "In terms of casting, we try to look for kids who are a little bit older, up to twelve or thirteen. The idea is if they see [an older kid], they’ll want to do that as well."
The agency uses casting agents to help it find professional, experienced, child actors. "They’re all pros," says Hughes, "but they have to be credible, believable and look natural."
The actual traits and characteristics Hughes seeks depend on the nature of the spot. " ‘Foosball’ was done in an arcade where kids were playing the game and had to react to the game coming to life, with the game pieces becoming world class soccer players," says Hughes, referring to a spot directed by Jens Jonsson of hundred street films, Miami. "They didn’t have lines [of dialogue], so we were looking for facial reactions and believability."
"Aunt Edna," directed by Art Haynie, a freelance helmer, was much tougher to cast, with one child carrying the story of dreaming his parents had died, leaving him in the care of a wacky aunt. "The kid had to do a stunt and deliver a line," Hughes explains. "He had to run down a set of stairs and then dive across a table, sending glasses of orange juice, plates and toast everywhere. And then, on cue, blow out a match. He had to tell his parents, ‘Hey, we’ve got to talk,’ and that had to be delivered just right. He couldn’t sound like a brat and he couldn’t sound as if this were a joke."
The spot called for acting experience, and Hughes found the right kid in Vancouver, B.C., where the spot was filmed. "We needed a kid who was very energetic but experienced," Hughes says. "He was going to have a long day. The idea of losing your parents and it being kind of funny the way you’re reacting to your aunt and suddenly showing concern for your parentsathat’s a wide range of emotions and expressions and it’s kind of a sophisticated concept for a kid to get. But we had great casting agents and Art Haynie did a good job of helping us select."
The campaign that asher&partners, Los Angeles, is executing for the California Children and Families Commission attempts to draw attention to the importance of mental, emotional and physical well-being in a young child’s life, and that includes a smoke-free environment.
"We’re dealing with very young kids," says partner/chief creative officer Bruce Dundore. "We try to look for real people and we will try to bring the parent on because the kids will respond more to the parent than to an unknown. At four and five, they become a lot more responsive to direction but below that, they’re babies for all intents and purposes."
Dundore draws on the Los Angeles talent pool for kids and often uses the children of actors with their parents in a spot. "We figure out how malleable they are, how they film, how responsive they are. We’re not asking for acting," he says. "We’re casting for reality. I want the small, great moments between parent and child."
The agency used Nicholas Brandt of Palomar Pictures, Los Angeles, for "Cradle Me," which featured babies and small children, with an emphasis on keeping the young kids in a smoke-free setting.
In working with children, Brandt prefers using actors, although he recognizes that four-and-five-year-olds can’t have done much acting. "I would always rather use actors as long as they don’t have that Hollywood precociousness about them," he says. "I want them to feel real. The whole purpose of using kids is to make the viewers’ hearts reach out to them so the performances have to be moving."
Riester-Robb, Phoenix, has done some 30 anti-tobacco spots for the Arizona Department of Health Services account, and VP/creative director Dave Robb says the agency uses a mix of actors and nonprofessionals in the spots. "We’ve worked with theater groups at schools," he says. "We’ve gone to any number of community groups and that type of thing and been incredibly successful using kids like that. They’ve turned out to be very good little actors."
What he is really after is the right look. "Believability is what we go after," says Robb. "You have to have a look that other kids can relate to." He notes that it isn’t a look that one finds in toy or cereal spots. "Those kids are very clean-scrubbed and their teeth and hair are perfect, and they’re cute and very charming. Ours tend to carry a touch more attitude, for the most part," Robb explains. "They’re not perfect. We want somebody who looks like they smoke, but they don’t. Somebody that a kid who is potentially on the edge of smoking can relate to and say, ‘Hey, I don’t need to do this. I’ll be fine without it.’ "
Campbell Mithun Esty (CME), Minneapolis, created two anti-tobacco spotsa"Thank You" and "Invitation"afor the Minnesota Department of Health using unscripted dialogue from teens attending a statewide youth summit called the Kick Ash Bash. The premise of the campaign is to create an "underground" movement by teens, talking to teens. ("Thank You" was footage of teens speaking, and did not have a director, but was edited by Bert Cambridge of Uppercut Editorial, Minneapolis. "Invitation" was helmed by Joe Schaak, a director/ partner at Minneapolis-based Twist.)
Ann Brimacombe, associate creative director at CME, and the art director on "Thank You," says that of the 400 or so teens who signed up for the session, about 250 tried out for the ad campaign. "At the bash, we created a thing called the Truth Booth where kids could go in and speak their minds about what they think about big tobacco," she says.
The teens couldn’t see the cameraman in the booth and there was no director to instruct them on how to deliver their unscripted lines. "It was really playful and fun, like a photo booth. In a way, it was like we were shooting a casting session. We would shut the curtain on them and they would just spew. Some of it was really emotional. A It was really natural and they felt safe in there because there were no adults around," Brimacombe says. "I was worried that these kids were all going to be ‘average-Joe’ people who sign up for these kinds of events, but they were awesome. There were Goth kids, weird loner kids, there were kind of beat poet kids, all these kids I had really hoped to cast up there. We really tried to encourage the kids who looked the most interesting, who looked a little extraordinary, as you would in a normal casting session."
CME also created "Invitation" at the Kick Ash Bash. It, too, used the same pool of teens, this time reacting to the fact that executives from the big tobacco companies had declined invitations to attend the summit. "The casting call for the spots occurred as the kids were checking into the summit," says Rob Wallace, senior VP/creative director at CME. "We wanted kids that would be comfortable appearing before a camera while basically going about their business. The ongoing commitment we have as an agency, and the Minnesota Department of Health has, is to make this of, by and for kids."
The role of the director was more subordinated in the two spots than it would be in most other commercials, but Wallace says it was important to find someone comfortable working with real people. For "Invitation," the agency called on Schaak, who participated in the casting. "We wanted people who were outgoing, comfortable, somewhat of a ham," says Schaak. "We got to the conference at about 3:30 and we made our decision at about 10:30 that evening. The kids were really eager. They were up in arms against the tobacco industry."
Picking the appropriate director for an anti-tobacco spot is a matter of hiring someone who is right for the particular spot, rather than for the anti-tobacco genre or whole campaign, ad executives say. Hughes notes that the spots MW&B has done for the R. A. T. campaign each had different requirements. "Toy Soldiers" featured clay animation, and was created by Tom Gasek of Out of Hand (Ooh) Animation, Lenox, Mass. (Gasek was with Suspended Animation, also in Lenox, when he made the ad.) "For ‘Aunt Edna,’ Art Haynie’s reel reflected what we needed in terms of a storyteller who could show a sense of character and humor throughout the spot and tell a pretty complicated story in a simple way," says Hughes.
Haynie, who is based in Phoenix, calls himself a "suspended adolescent" and says his laid-back style allows him to develop a rapport with kids. "This project came along for this crazy weird character and that’s kind of my specialtyaweirdos," Haynie says. "I like working with kids a lot, but it’s not really my thing. I didn’t know if they kind of pegged me to make Edna come alive or to work with the kid. There’s nothing like that on my reel."
In casting the spot, Haynie gave candidates little scenarios to act out. " ‘What if your parents were doing this? What if they were doing that? What would you think?’ I would put them in those shoes and let them figure it out for themselves," he explains. "That way there is more of a natural performance. They either get it or they don’t."
Riester-Robb’s approach for Arizona’s ads was emotional, but in a completely different sense. "Our goal was to keep kids from starting to smoke," Robb says. "When we started this campaign, it revolved around a tumor-causing, teeth-staining, smelly, puking habit," a description that remains the campaign’s tagline.
The most recent spot, "Smoking Drill," was directed by the mono-monikered Jaume, and produced through his former roost, bicoastal The End. (He is now represented by bicoastal/international Partizan.) The surrealistic spot features an assembly line where teens are slowly tortured to death by tobacco. "You’ve got to zone in on directors who really understand what you’re trying to do, who can really wrap their arms around what you’re trying to accomplish," Robb says, noting that Jaume was involved in "Smoking Drill" from casting to editing. "Some will have a tendency to get on a soap box. Well, maybe the spot isn’t a soapbox spot. You can’t preach to kids. You’ve got to get a director who can think through a child’s eyes, who can think like a child and not like an adult lecturing a child."
