Everyone knows that the Super Bowl is about more than football. The game is viewed as the premium arena for high-profile, big-budget commercials, which puts the spotlight-for better or worse-on everyone from agency creatives to production companies and their directors. This year the Super Bowl ad stakes are higher than ever before: Not only is it rumored that the cost of buying ad time on ABC’s telecast of the game is as much as $3 million per :30, but numerous dot-com companies hope to make their identities known during this mega television event.
The clash between the Tennessee Titans and the St. Louis Rams has also provided postproduction artisans with the chance to flex their creative muscles. In this year’s Special Report on Post Talent, SHOOT spoke to a few of the artists behind Super Sunday advertising.
Stefan Sonnenfeld
Doing Super Bowl commercials is nothing new for Company 3, Santa Monica president/colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld, who has worked on numerous spots that have made the USA Today top 10 post-Super Bowl poll. Including this year’s Super Bowl lineup, the score comes to approximately 30 commercials for the postproduction boutique, which Sonnenfeld launched in ’98 with fellow co-founder/colorist Mike Pethel, and Four Media Company (4MC) CEO Rob Walston. (Company 3 is a division of the Burbank, Calif.-based 4MC family of companies, which include Riot, Santa Monica; Encore Hollywood; POP, Santa Monica; and Digital Magic Company, Santa Monica.) Other key Company 3 players include Noel Castley-Wright, director of visual effects, and telecine colorist Dave Hussey.
For Super Bowl XXXIV, Sonnenfeld contributed to a number of commercials, including two ads for Mountain Dew out of BBDO New York: "Mock Opera," directed by Samuel Bayer of bicoastal Mars Media, and "Cheetah," directed by Kinka Usher of Santa Monica-based House of Usher.
"It is different only in that there is usually a lot more pressure and it’s more rushed," says Sonnenfeld of the challenges of working on such high-stakes work. "They are typically big-budget jobs, and you get in a crunch where it has to get done."
Shot in Africa and California, "Cheetah" features a biker chasing the animal. When the bike-riding man finally catches up with the cheetah, he sticks his arm down the animal’s throat in an effort to retrieve a can of Mountain Dew the cheetah has stolen. After he gets the soda back, the biker drinks it, and the cheetah stalks away, with the words "Do The Dew" clearly visible on his fur.
"Mock Opera" spoofs the British rock group Queen and its song "Bohemian Rhapsody." As four twentysomethings sings a Mountain Dew-infused version of the song, images of extreme sports such as snowboarding flash across the screen. At the end of the song, the quartet realizes it has an audience, who in typical rock concert fashion, are holding up cigarette lighters. One group of lighters then spells out "Do The Dew."
"The challenge was to come up with a unique look for each spot and make each interesting, without taking away from the inherent message," says Sonnenfeld, whose other recent credits include Homestore.com’s "Quest," directed by Joe Pytka of Venice, Calif.-based PYTKA, and The Gap’s "Mountains," helmed by Michel Gondry of bicoastal/international Partizan via the advertiser’s in-house agency.
Sonnenfeld has a reputation for adding unique color and a new look to his commercials. After moving up through the postproduction ranks and teaching himself how to color, Sonnenfeld landed at The Post Group, Hollywood, where music video and commercial director Peter Nydrle, now of Nydrle Productions, West Hollywood, recognized his abilities and threatened to take his own work elsewhere if Sonnenfeld wasn’t available. Sonnenfeld soon attracted attention from other directors because he was known to make film "glow."
"The role of the colorist is different, depending on the spot," Sonnenfeld says. "I have a lot of input-all of these directors and the creatives are friends of mine-so we’ll sit in a room and try different things. We changed directions a few times on one of the spots, then went the opposite way just to come to something that we all felt was better.
"Because there are so many different ways you go now with the technology, it’s sometimes better for people to shoot things straighter-as opposed to doing a lot of the filters-and then take it to where you want to in the colorist’s room," he continues. "That’s especially true for the Super Bowl, because they’re spending so much to have a great spot with great sound and a great look to the film."
Chris Ryan
Chris Ryan is a colorist who rose through the ranks to his current position at Nice Shoes, New York. For this year’s Super Bowl, his work includes The Wizard of Oz take-off, "Oz" for Federal Express, out of BBDO New York, and helmed by Pytka. The ad features the Munchkins singing a welcome song to Dorothy. But as they sing, the three Munchkins find that their voices grow deeper. A FedEx truck arrives-crushing the Wicked Witch of the West-and delivers helium filled balloons, which, after inhaled by the Munchkins, return their voices to normal.
The spot required a great deal of compositing. Ryan’s job was to match new footage with older film stock. "A lot of elements were composited into actual footage from the Munchkinland scene in The Wizard of Oz," Ryan explains. "They kept Dorothy but took out the Lollipop Twins, and shot three guys in greenscreen. I had to match the color palette of the old footage with the greenscreen stuff so that it could be composited seamlessly. It was challenging because we had to match Technicolor film with modern film stock."
As is his usual practice, Ryan, who works on a DaVinci 2K high-definition color corrector, gets involved when the footage arrives at Nice Shoes. Because there was so much compositing involved in "Oz," however, his involvement with the project began right after the shoot. Upon being called in to evaluate the film, he was then left to his own devices.
"On this kind of spot, it was less of a creative decision and more that it had to work in a certain way," says Ryan of his early involvement. "It was more problem-solving than creative [work]. The spots I enjoy most are where I really get input with the director or art director, and we come up with new ideas and new looks-things that haven’t been done before. I don’t enjoy just fixing things, which is a lot of what colorists do. But sometimes people come here because they know I can get a lot out of the film, … they have issues that need to be fixed.
"I started in the mailroom at Manhattan Transfer right out of college in ’89," Ryan continues. "I’ve been at Nice Shoes since it opened three years ago. I got into being a colorist because I was always interested in photography. It was also an area that not a lot of people wanted to get into-they wanted to do graphics-so there was a lot of opportunity."
Ryan has experienced the pre-game stress of meeting tight deadlines. "I’ve been doing Super Bowl spots for years," he says. "The reason it gets stressful is that they end up shooting [the spot] so late. Sometimes we’re here on the Friday before [the game], transferring as they’re editing."
Dave Gibson
Dave Gibson, a colorist at Post Perfect, New York, has one comment on all the hoopla: "It’s a disgusting amount of money to spend for thirty seconds. These dot-com commercials have pushed the rate up tremendously. It’s almost obscene."
Gibson recently joined Post Perfect from Windmill Lane Pictures, Dublin, where he moved up through the ranks from tape operator to senior colorist. His credit list includes work on commercials for clients such as McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Gillette, Toyota, Volkswagen, Ford, Guinness, Heineken, Carlsberg, Bass and Kellogg’s.
"Coming to Post Perfect and New York allowed me to concentrate on commercial projects, which is my greatest area of interest at this stage of my career," explains Gibson. "I am looking forward to collaborating with the other artists here. Post Perfect also offers me the opportunity to work with the world’s best ad agency clients."
On board for a little over three months, Gibson has already made his first foray onto Super Bowl turf with "e-Cowboy" for LastMinuteTravel.com, a Web site specializing in just-released travel offers, out of Burkhardt and Hillman, New York. The spot was directed by Dick Buckley through bicoastal Flying Tiger Films. "I don’t know how that happened," Gibson says. "Only being here three months, I take the work they give me."
Shot in a Sergio Leone spaghetti-western style, "e-Cowboy" features two cowboys in an old Western town with a tornado barreling towards them. At first the two, who seem unconcerned about the inclement weather, appear to be nearing a classic High Noon face-off, but begin discussing travel plans instead. As the twister bears down on them, they calmly discuss their interest in visiting Maui. "They shot it in a desert in California, which lent itself very nicely to scenic sky and the deep, dirty skin tones [of the cowboys]," he says. "The director was there and he had this vision all the way through, and the two of us really connected. I knew exactly where he was going. They had done the dailies in Los Angeles to get it ninety percent there, and I took off at that point."
Gibson notes that "e-Cowboy" diverges somewhat from his experience working on big commercials in Ireland. "Back home, I’d go to the shoot for at least one day and do my own dailies and work with the director to get it eighty percent there. We’d cut it in the Avid and show the agency where we were going with it. And for the final color correction session there would be just me, the director and the editor. As a result, we’d get really tied into it."
Chris Gennarelli
Chris Gennarelli of Manhattan Transfer, New York, was the colorist on "Fingerprint" for The Wall Street Journal’s Web site, a Super Bowl spot out of Boston-based Arnold Communications. The commercial was directed by Simon Taylor of the design/directing collective known as Tomato, which is represented by bicoastal Curious Pictures. Despite being a Super Bowl spot, "Fingerprint," according to Gennarelli, was not that different from other projects he’s worked on.
Gennarelli joined Manhattan Transfer in ’88 as part of a college internship. After graduating from Quinnipac College, Hamden, Conn., in ’89, he accepted a full-time position at Manhattan Transfer. Although he had worked in numerous departments in the company, it was in the telecine department where Ryan found his niche.
After learning the basics as an assistant to some of the Manhattan Transfer colorists, Gennarelli was promoted to the position of night colorist, where he expanded his skills over the course of the next three years. "I’ve been able to pull a little bit from each of the colorists I worked with, all top guys," he says. "And now we’re working together on spots. It’s been a lot of fun."
Gennarelli gained a reputation for his work on music videos, including clips for Joan Osbourne and a documentary on Janet Jackson. He then segued into spotwork and is now a daytime colorist at the com-pany. One of his most recent credits is Sprint’s "City Limits," directed by Michael Karbelnikoff of bicoastal HKM Productions via McCann-Erickson, New York, and featuring Once and Again star Sela Ward.
"My job is to interpret what the agency, director or editor wants," explains Gennarelli, who works on the URSA Diamond telecine with ITK’s Y Front and the DaVinci 2K color corrector. "I have to give them what they shot and what they’re looking for. Sometimes they shoot one thing, but then change their minds and want to go in another direction. I get creative input when clients ask me what I would do. However, I pride myself on trying to be as flexible as possible and to do what the client wants. I’ll try anything they want to try."
Jerry Spivack
Effects and design studio Ring of Fire, West Hollywood, is no stranger to the Super Bowl. Last year, the company worked on "Separated at Birth" for Budweiser, via DDB Needham (now DDB) Chicago, and directed by Buddy Cone of Palomar Pictures, Los Angeles. Featuring two Dalmatian puppies-one which grows to becomes a firehouse pet, the other that gets to ride with the famous Clydesdale horses-the commercial was voted the number one spot for the ’99 Super Bowl in the USA Today poll.
This year, the company contributed its expertise to two Super Bowl ads: the regional "Comet," for McIlhenny Co. Tabasco via DDB Dallas, directed by Charles Wittenmeier of bicoastal/international Propaganda Films; and "Advances," for investment bank Nuveen & Co., directed by Andrew Douglas of bicoastal/international Satellite, out of Fallon McElligott, Minneapolis. (Douglas has since shifted representation to bicoastal 8Media.) In "Advances," an awards banquet is being held in the not-too-distant future. As an announcer talks about how AIDS, cancer and other ills have been eradicated, he adds one more to the list: paralysis. With that, he presents an award to actor Christopher Reeve, who was paralyzed in an accident and is in now involved in spinal cord research. Jerry Spivack, creative director/visual effects supervisor/ senior Henry artist/ founder/partner of Ring of Fire, contributed to both spots. For Nuveen & Co.’s spot he was visual effects supervisor and Henry artist, and was creative director for "Comet."
"We had a long-term relationship with the director and the agency, and so we started collaborating," says Spivak of his company’s involvement with "Comet." The spot begins with a scene of a peaceful country barn. Suddenly, meteors and comets begin to fall, and destroy everything with a flurry of fire and explosions. The spot then cuts to a shot of the sky, revealing a god up in heaven eating a pizza and watching TV-and in the process spilling his Tabasco sauce, which is so fiery and spicy that it causes the destruction down below. "It’s a combination of greenscreen shots, shooting elements at various locations, creating CGI comets, miniature explosions, water and glass elements, and doing sky replacement," explains Spivack,
"There were a number of different challenges to working on ‘Comet,’ " Spivack recalls. "One was budget: How can we achieve this grandiose idea within a budget, without compromising [the detail]? We came up with a number of creative solutions to these effects, which kept the production values up. We created a bunch of exterior plates, combining CGI and miniature photography. As usual, we were involved from the get-go in every element as a production resource."
Born and raised in the Chicago area, Spivack earned a B.A. in mass communication television production from Bradley University, Peoria, Ill. Upon graduation, he worked at Chicago-based post house Polycom Teleproductions. After three years there, he launched the Los Angeles division of Polycom, and says he was one of the first artists to introduce the Quantel Harry to the Los Angeles post community. Among his other recent credits is Ericcson’s "Aliens," directed by Eric Joiner of bicoastal Tool of North America for Hall/Cederquist/Y&R, Stockholm.8
