What you don’t know really can hurt you–in fact, it might even eject you from your car as we see in “Recall,” a new spot touting Yahoo!’s new-and-improved, information-packed homepage.
Created by Soho Square, New York, and directed by Craig Gillespie of Los Angeles-based MJZ, the commercial opens on two buddies pulling up to an intersection.
“So, what do you think of the car?” the driver of the newly purchased vehicle asks his friend.
“Pretty sweet,” his friend says, “but the recall must have been annoying.”
“The what?” the driver asks, barely getting the words out before his airbag explodes, sending him flying out the back window of the car and into the street.
Ouch. Clearly, this guy didn’t know about the airbag recall.
The scenario is then replayed.
“So, what do you think of the car?”
“Pretty sweet, but the recall must have been annoying.”
“No, it’s good,” the driver responds. “I read about it on Yahoo!”
While the driver avoids being spit out of his car a second time because he took his car to the dealer to have the faulty airbag fixed, we subsequently see two people ejected from a passing car–clearly, they knew nothing about the airbag recall.
The spot ends with a look at Yahoo!’s new homepage, and a valuable lesson is learned about the power of the portal.
“Recall” is one of three new Yahoo! spots; Gillespie directed the trio, which also includes “Bully,” which tells the tale of a little boy getting the upper-hand on the school bully, and “Garden,” which finds a dog getting a second chance at life.
“They are simple demo spots, but we wanted to do something that wasn’t really expected,” Soho Square group creative director Jeff Curry said when asked to explain the rationale behind the campaign.
In the case of “Recall,” it is a shock when the driver is propelled out of the car by an exploding airbag. “It’s so over the top,” Curry acknowledged with a laugh. “Basically, your life will be a disaster and will go to all hell if you don’t use Yahoo!”
Meanwhile, there is a lot of information packed into “Recall”–two scenarios are played out in the span of 30 seconds. “That’s definitely a credit to Craig and our editor Avi [Oron of New York’s Bikini Edit],” praised art director Josh Rosen. “We had two entirely different stories we were trying to fit together and in the edit it seemed the quicker we played out the jokes, the funnier they were. If we started to belabor each side of the story, it actually got a lot less funny.”
Gillespie, who was working on a film and couldn’t be reached at press time, shot “Recall” on location in Van Nuys, Calif., with Wyatt Troll serving as DP.
As he routinely does, Gillespie brought Sight Effects, the Venice, Calif.-based effects shop onboard. Sight Effects executive producer Melissa Davies noted that this project was challenging in that it was shot handheld. “There’s no motion control,” Davies explained, “so we had to get everything lined up as close as we could at the shoot, then we basically had to try to seamlessly in post get from real guy to dummy back to real guy, making it look like it was just one piece.”
Prior to the shoot there was, of course, a great deal of preparation that went into the planning of the live-action stunt/visual effects work. While Sight Effects handled the visual effects portion of the job, The Effects Group, Los Angeles, pulled off the live-action stunts that had dummies sprung from cars. The project called for Adrian Hurley, VFX supervisor of Sight Effects, and special effects director Jeremy Hays of The Effects Group, to work closely together.
One of the biggest challenges for the Sight Effects crew came in replacing the dummy’s body with that of the principal actor’s once the dummy had been blown clear of the car and was lying on the pavement. Immediately after the dummy hit the ground, “There were four or five of us who marked the spot and made photographic reference as to where our live action talent would go. We had to be very meticulous about that,” Hurley said.
Then it came time to manipulate the imagery in post. “A lot of times the dummy will land with his leg in a position that a human could not get into,” Hurley shared. “So we need to do some manipulating of the body parts of the dummy and also the body parts of the actor in the Inferno here. It takes quite awhile to do this Inferno because [the switch between dummy and actor] needs to look as seamless as possible.”
As for the directorial choice, copywriter Mark Svartz said of Gillespie, “The main reason we went to him is because he is amazing at taking a simple idea and making it over-the-top funny without going too broad.”
AICP’s Matt Miller Looks To Build Support For Production In L.A. After Devastating Wildfires
Editor’s note: AICP president and CEO Matt Miller issued the following statement addressing the wildfires in Los Angeles and how the industry can help this key production market--a hub of major resources essential to the health of the overall commercialmaking industry:
Who Needs Los Angeles? We Do.
By Matt Miller, AICP president and CEO
One doesn’t have to be a statistician to know that there are fewer commercials being shot in the U.S. today for the American market than ever before, and a dramatic decrease in L.A. in particular. In the last five years, as reported by FilmLA (the office tasked with issuing permits), L.A. commercial production has dipped 31 percent.
But here’s the thing: This doesn’t mean that L.A. has lost its importance as the production center of the world. Production in L.A. is vital. It is the go-to. It’s where you can count on access to exemplary crews, a support infrastructure second to none, varied location and backlot options, a large population of on-screen talent and (fairly) predictable weather.
The fact is, with overall decline and now the devastation of the fires, we’re on the brink of losing this mainstay resource. Without employment opportunities and now many without homes, talented and trained crew are bound to leave either the industry or the L.A. area for other opportunities, unless there are enough job opportunities to sustain a solid living.
Now is the time when we ALL must support and bolster this community.
Production is needed in L.A., now!
Of course, advertising is a business, and marketers’ money should be spent as efficiently as possible, BUT we have to think beyond each production and know that if we lose the... Read More