They don’t move a muscle. They don’t even blink, and their mouths don’t open when they speak. Yet the two static farm guy figures featured in a new spot for Tractor Supply Company called “Headed to TSC” sure do make for compelling characters. In fact, one can’t help but be drawn to these strangely still types.
For those of you who haven’t seen the :30 “Headed to TSC,” the spot finds a farmer named Dale stopping his pickup truck on his way to the local Tractor Supply Company store to speak with a friend, Ed, who is standing by the side of the road. When Ed realizes that Dale is going to Tractor Supply Company, he asks his buddy to pick him up a gallon of tire sealant. Dale is fine with that, and he also has no problem fulfilling Ed’s subsequent request, which is for a 50-pound bag of dog food. But when Ed asks Dale to pick up a 35-ton log splitter, we can see by the look on Dale’s face that that’s where he draws the line.
Cut to the pickup truck driving down the road with both Dale and Ed in the cab.
“Why didn’t you just ask me for a ride?” Dale says.
“I didn’t want to put you out,” Ed replies.
“Headed to TSC” is one in a multi-spot campaign for Tractor Supply Company created by Carmichael Lynch, Minneapolis, and executed by director Paul Harrod of Bent Image Lab in Portland, Ore. According to Carmichael Lynch creative director/art director Randy Tatum, he and his partner creative director/ copywriter Steve Casey were inspired to create a world of non-moving characters to represent Tractor Supply Company customers after spotting a photo of a nostalgic figure. “That’s when the light bulb went off,” Tatum said. “We realized if our characters were inanimate, we could use that to great comedic effect.”
Tatum and Casey went on to create a world of about a dozen characters, writing up detailed character descriptions for each. Ed, for example, is the kind of friend “that always asks you to pick up something for him or if you’re finished with your sandwich,” Tatum shared with a laugh.
The ideas for the people who would populate the Tractor Supply Company spots in hand, Carmichael Lynch then sought a director and production company to bring them to life, considering talents from both the animation and live action world. Harrod and creative partner Chel White of Bent Image Lab impressed the agency with their enthusiasm for the project, Tatum said, noting that the two guys even flew out to Minneapolis to meet with the agency and show a rough demo they had put together.
“I think it was a trick question, but when we were first talking to [the guys from Carmichael Lynch], they asked us, ‘Now are you disappointed that there is no animation happening here?’ ” Harrod recalled, “and Chel and I were both in absolute agreement when we said, ‘Absolutely not.’ ”
“There seemed to be a wonderful opportunity here to do something that wasn’t live action and that wasn’t animation and had a potential for a great aesthetic,” White added.
Then there were the scripts. “The scripts were understated, which is something we don’t tend to get a lot of in animation,” Harrod praised. “Really to the point, with a kind of dry, bucolic humor that all of us really appreciate.”
Relying on the character descriptions provided by Carmichael Lynch, the artists at Bent Image Lab sketched and then sculpted a series of original characters that were cast into urethane figures and painted with acrylics. Many of the characters were built in dual scale. For example, in addition to crafting a six-inch tall version of Ed, the artists also made a three-inch tall bust of Ed’s head, which was used for some close-up shots.
Harrod and DP Mark Eifert shot the figures featured in the “Headed to TSC” spot on a set of miniatures and models. But they also shot live-action background plates of farmland and sky in rural California–if you look closely at the spot, you’ll notice the clouds move and a bird flies by in the far distance.
Why not simply shoot the whole spot on a miniature set with a fake background? “I think more than anything else it was a matter of creating our own world that was not necessarily a live-action world and not necessarily a miniature world but some place that exists between,” Harrod said, noting that the spot also might have failed to appeal to the desired adult demographic if it seemed that Ed and Dale existed in a world that was too pretend, too childlike.
Not content to rely on the live-action backgrounds as they were shot, Harrod and his crew tweaked them. “The clouds in almost every shot are not the clouds that were shot with that landscape background. We would shoot clouds as separate elements and composite them in, and we would speed up the clouds to make them move through shots a little bit faster,” Harrod said. “I think in some cases it is nearly undetectable, but I think on a subconscious level it is really apparent [that the background] is not still.”
White noted: “There is almost a referential comedy about it, where you’re pointing out how static these characters are by having the clouds moving more than they are.”
While the look of “Headed to TSC” is eye-catching, the spot is ultimately dialogue driven. In keeping with the characters’ slow, deliberate way of speaking, editor Kelly McLean of King Cut in Los Angeles gave their lines room to breathe, installing a pregnant pause during which a shot holds on Dale’s face after Ed makes a ludicrous request for him to pick up a 35-ton log splitter.
Carmichael Lynch chief creative officer Peter McHugh pointed out that all of the Tractor Supply Company spots have that pregnant pause moment, where the talking comes to a halt. “It’s a more accurate reflection of who these people are. They aren’t from New York. They’re not wall-to-wall talkers,” McHugh explained. “They think about something before they respond.”
Cast for their Midwestern accents, J. Marvin Campbell and Geoff Pierson provide the voices of Ed and Dale, respectively. Ken Brahmstedt of Minneapolis-based Brahmstedt White Noise (BWN) composed the fast-paced, guitar-oriented track that closes out “Headed to TSC,” while BWN’s Carl White did the sound design.
Having done a total of seven spots for the launch of the new Tractor Supply Company campaign, Carmichael Lynch is now working on four more with Bent Image Lab.
“We’ve got a great client,” Tatum remarked. “They’ve really embraced this campaign, and they loved it from the concept stage when we sold them to them just by talking about the ideas.”