By Robert Goldrich

We open in a hospital waiting room where a family sits pensively waiting to hear about a loved one. The camera centers on a man whose angst is evident. It turns out his wife is in surgery.

    Finally a surgeon comes out from the operating room and gives the man good news about his spouse. She appears to be free of cancer; the operation successfully removed the cancerous tissue and there’s no sign of the disease spreading.

The husband is grateful and understandably relieved. But our focus is no longer on him. Instead the camera follows the surgeon as he washes up and takes off his surgical scrub shirt, revealing what appear to be gang tattoos on his body.

A voiceover then relates, “When you keep an at-risk kid at school, there’s no telling how many lives you save. Southwest Key keeps more kids in school and out of jail.”

The spot ends with a Web site address for the nonprofit organization (www.swkey.org), which operates youth-intervention programs for kids in such states as Arizona, California, Delaware, New York, Texas and Wisconsin. Southwest Key has been in existence for 17-plus years.

“Surgeon,” which started airing last month, was directed by Kathi Prosser of bicoastal/international Chelsea Pictures. The spot came out of Southwest Key’s in-house agency, for which Cindy Casares and Kristal Kinder were copywriter and art director, respectively.

Katy Greene executive produced for Chelsea, with Valerie Druckman serving as producer and Cory Lorenzen as production designer. The DP was Mark Williams who shot the spot at Robert F. Kennedy Hospital in Hawthorne, Calif..

Editor was Mike Colao of Final Cut, New York. Rana Martin produced for Final Cut. Colorist was Tom Poole of The Mill, New York. Music/sound design house was Human, New York. Audio post mixer was Roland Alley of Final Cut, New York. Principal actors were Nikko De Jesus and Richard Eck.

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