When Livio Sanchez of The Lookinglass Company, Santa Monica and Chicago, was asked to edit Budweiser’s "Whassup/True" campaign, he leaped at the chance. The editor had viewed True, the short film upon which the commercials are based, eight months prior to seeing the storyboards for the spots. The film was the brainchild of Charles Stone III, the director behind the wildly popular ads. "I was the natural choice. I was the one who dubbed copies of the original short and starting handing them out to everybody at Lookinglass," explains Sanchez. "When DDB sent us the boards, I felt, ‘Who better to cut the spots than me?’ "
"Whassup/True" has become a pop-culture phenomenon. It earned a nomination for the Emmy Award for best primetime commercial, won the Grand Prix at the Cannes International Advertising Festival, was honored in the humor category at the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Show at MoMA, and nabbed the Grand Clio at The Clio Awards. It also put Stone, of C&C Films/Storm Films Brooklyn, N.Y.—who directed, wrote and starred in both the short and the commercials—into the world of feature films. (He’s now slated to direct a coming-of-age drama set in Brooklyn.)
For Sanchez, the "Whassup/ True" campaign—which consists of the ads "Whassup/True," "Whassup/Call Waiting," "Whassup/Girlfriend" and "Whassup/Pizza Guy"—clearly represents his most celebrated editing achievement to date. It has also made his job even more difficult. "Expectations are definitely much higher now, and finding ways to exceed those expectations is that much harder," says Sanchez, who edits out of The Lookinglass Company’s Santa Monica office. (He also cut Bud’s "Wasabi," "Dream Girls," "The Message" and "The Game," the follow-up spots to "Whassup/True.")
Regardless of the challenge, Sanchez says he continues to take the same approach to every editing project: He finds the purest, most honest elements in the footage and then builds from there, one select at a time. "I don’t worry about trying to fit everything into that thirty-second world," he relates, "at least not initially. I spend a day watching the dailies, preferably alone, and look for that single, pure moment, whether it’s visual, a bit of comedy, or dialogue—whatever it might be. Once I have that in hand, I rough out the spot, which gives the director, the agency, whomever, something solid to work from."
With "Whassup/True," it didn’t take long for Sanchez to zone in on what the spot was ultimately about: friends communicating. Its purest element was just as obvious to Sanchez—the funny and realistic way it mirrored friends talking on the phone while watching television. The challenge was relating that realism and humor, staged originally for a short film, into a commercial format. "The product, in this case, was courageously played down by Budweiser, sort of left in the background," explains Sanchez. "My job was to speed up the pacing of the original short, without detracting from the integrity of the original work."
Sanchez worked closely with Stone throughout the initial editing stages. That collaboration, the editor believes, added significantly to the campaign’s ultimate success. "We would constantly exchange ideas, toss around different suggestions," he recalls. "We laughed a lot, but got a lot accomplished, and, more importantly, maintained the work’s honesty."
Inside Out
Sanchez’s editorial approach took root while he was interning at The Post Group, Hollywood. But it was not until he began honing his craft under editor Michael Elliot at the Santa Monica facility of Mad River Post, in 1991, that his philosophy of editing "from the inside out" really took form. (Mad River also has offices in San Francisco and New York; Elliot now works through the latter.) Sanchez had just graduated from Emerson College, a Boston-based liberal arts communications school, when Mad River hired him as a post supervisor/assistant. "It was the early days for Mad River, and it provided me a great opportunity to get in on their Avid operation pretty much from the ground up," relates Sanchez. "Elliot was my mentor at the time, and it was from him that I really learned a lot about the art of editing."
In March of ’98, Sanchez met the gang from The Lookinglass Company and decided to make the switch. Lookinglass, based in Chicago, had opened its Santa Monica branch just six months earlier and was looking for some new blood. "Things were getting maybe a bit stale for me at Mad River, so I figured the time had come to try something new," he says.
The move proved pivotal for Sanchez, who in his two and a half years with the company has built on what was already becoming an impressive and diverse portfolio of spot work. In addition to the "Whassup/True" collection, some of his recent credits include Bud Light’s "Working Late," and "Towel," both helmed by Dave Merhar, through Visitor, Santa Monica, out of Fusion Idea Lab, Chicago. (Merhar has since shifted representation from Visitor to bicoastal HSI Productions.) Sanchez also cut Sony PlayStation’s "Regis Impersonation," directed by Jonathan David of bicoastal Morton Jankel Zander, and Nike’s "Mrs. Jones," directed by Young Kim of bicoastal/ international hungry man, out of Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore.
Sanchez has also edited his first feature film, Broke Even, directed by David Feldman, which is currently making the film festival run in search of a distributor; and cut the award-winning documentary Taken In: The Lives of America’s Foster Children, directed by Vanessa Roth. He has his eye on other long-form projects, as well. "One of the great things about working for Lookinglass," he notes, "is that the company encourages you to get involved in different projects, to explore what interests you the most."
Sanchez says that his prime interest these days is to be exposed to as many types of editing work as possible, and hopefully to continue collaborating with directors such as Stone and Kim, who keep raising the creative bar a bit higher with each shoot. He particularly enjoys being brought into the production process as early as possible. But whomever he works with, or whenever, Sanchez remains careful not to crowd out the director’s own creativity. "I’ll give my opinions when asked," he says, "then wait for the film."
The editor says he doesn’t focus too much on how or why a sequence was shot, or on whether a director should have or shouldn’t have shot a scene in a particular way. However it was done, Sanchez believes his job is to deal with what’s in front of him at the moment. "I prefer to deal with the end result, what I have to work with. How it got there is, by the time I get it, unimportant."
Sanchez is particularly excited about three Toyota RAV4 spots—"Storm," White Synch" and "Applause"—which he’s just finished. Directed by Gavin Bowden of bicoastal Original Film for Saatchi & Saatchi LA, Torrance, Calif., these involved 35mm stills arranged in sequence and shot on film. It was challenging to edit, Sanchez notes, and "visually arresting." Reflecting on the project, he adds that it represented to him what the essence of editing is all about: "It was a very unique way to tell a story." a
