Ariola Tangles With A Giant Ant For Juicy Fruit
By Christine Champagne
It isn’t just people who will go to great lengths in order to satisfy their craving for Juicy Fruit. Giant ants are also crazy about the gum as we see in a twisted new :30 titled “Ant.”
Part of Juicy Fruit’s long running “Gotta have sweet? Gotta have Juicy Fruit”-themed campaign, the commercial created by Chicago’s Energy BBDO and directed by Dante Ariola of bicoastal/international MJZ, opens with a guy standing in his front yard summoning what one might assume is his pet dog to play Frisbee.
But as it turns out, a giant pet ant comes bounding around the front of the house, obediently catching the Frisbee and returning it to his master, who takes out a stick of Juicy Fruit gum. The ant is excited, thinking his master is going to share the gum with him. Instead, his owner taunts him with the treat, and, well, the ant isn’t having any of that.
Turning on his master, the ant picks up the guy and tosses him across the yard like a rag doll. The man takes refuge in his car, but the ant rips off the door and drags him out of the vehicle and down an ant hole, where we have to assume the insect will finally get his Juicy Fruit fix.
Born out of the minds of Energy BBDO copywriter Zach Hilder and art director Ryan Dickey, “Ant” works because as outrageous as the situation is, you believe it is for real. In fact, the ant seems utterly real as opposed to a cartoon-like character. “We thought the spot would be a little more real and creepy if he looked like a real ant just blown up [in size],” Dickey said, noting, “and we wanted that ant to be ant-like. It needed to behave like an ant.”
Early on in the process, Energy BBDO reached out to Ariola for assistance in determining exactly how to create a giant ant that would come across as believable. Ariola, in turn, consulted with visual effects shop Asylum in Santa Monica, Calif. Asylum VFX supervisor Mitch Drain says the artisans at Asylum started on the project by combing through images of ants, looking for the right insect for the spot, then submitting their suggestions to Ariola. “He wanted to go with an ant that was a pretty generic garden variety ant, but he also wanted something that would pop out [on screen]–those were the criteria we were given,” Drain recalled. Ultimately, Ariola chose to have them create a black garden ant.
As for movement, it was important that viewers understand upfront that the ant was a pet and not some wild giant ant on the loose, so Asylum animation supervisor/lead animator Matt Hackett did some tests in which he gave the ant not only ant-like moves but some dog-like moves as well.
With approval from the client, Wm. Wrigley Jr./Juicy Fruit, to go ahead with the ambitious production, Ariola and DP Max Malkin headed to Australia to shoot “Ant” as well as another spot in the campaign. Drain and Hackett accompanied them to share their expertise.
The spot was shot on location in the front and back yards of a house in suburban Sydney. Ariola said he felt like he was channeling Ed Wood during the shoot as he ran around the lawn holding a stuffed Shetland pony, which served as a stand-in for the ant, providing sight lines for the actor and crew.
Ariola also found himself employing low-tech means to achieve some of the effects in the spot in-camera. For example, Ariola literally tugged at the actor cast as the ant’s master with poles to simulate the way the man’s body would move in a struggle with the ant. “I’m the biggest proponent of the simplest way is the best,” Ariola noted.
Because there was a time crunch involved, editor Kirk Baxter of Los Angeles-based Rock Paper Scissors traveled to Sydney to cut “Ant.”
Then the artisans at Asylum got to work, using Maya to animate the ant and Inferno to composite the character into the footage shot by Ariola. Specific code was written in-house at Asylum, Drain pointed out that helped give the ant a look of translucency in certain areas of its body.
As for Asylum’s work, Hilder had high praise, stressing, “They went full-on with it in the little time they had to get it done, and they exceeded everyone’s expectations.”
For his part, Drain said Ariola made a tough job easier to handle because “he had a really clear vision of what he wanted, and he gave us some really good storyboards.”
That said, Ariola was flexible on the set, trying new takes he thought might make the spot work better. Case in point: “Originally the ant was going to pull the man into the ant hole by his collar,” Drain shared. “But that just didn’t play well as far as getting the action down. It just didn’t look right seeing this guy going down head first, so Dante did an alternate version where the guy was pulled down by the leg.”
Adding to the suspenseful feel of “Ant” is a music/sound design track created for the spot by Santa Monica’s stimmung, with Gus Koven serving as sound designer and Cyrus Melchor as producer.
Asked what compelled him to take on this offbeat and challenging spot, Ariola mused, “It had a kind of David Lynch vibe about it, and I’ve always been attracted to that bizarro stuff.”
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More