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.”
Review: Director Jon M. Chu’s “Wicked”
It's the ultimate celebrity redemption tour, two decades in the making. In the annals of pop culture, few characters have undergone an image makeover quite like the Wicked Witch of the West.
Oh, she may have been vengeful and scary in "The Wizard of Oz." But something changed — like, REALLY changed — on the way from the yellow brick road to the Great White Way. Since 2003, crowds have packed nightly into "Wicked" at Broadway's Gershwin Theatre to cheer as the green-skinned, misunderstood Elphaba rises up on her broomstick to belt "Defying Gravity," that enduring girl-power anthem.
How many people have seen "Wicked"? Rudimentary math suggests more than 15 million on Broadway alone. And now we have "Wicked" the movie, director Jon M. Chu's lavish, faithful, impeccably crafted (and nearly three-hour) ode to this origin story of Elphaba and her (eventual) bestie — Glinda, the very good and very blonde. Welcome to Hollywood, ladies.
Before we get to what this movie does well (Those big numbers! Those costumes!), just a couple thornier issues to ponder. Will this "Wicked," powered by a soulful Cynthia Erivo (owner of one of the best singing voices on the planet) and a sprightly, comedic, hair-tossing Ariana Grande, turn even musical theater haters into lovers?
Tricky question. Some people just don't buy into the musical thing, and they should be allowed to live freely amongst us. But if people breaking into song delights rather than flummoxes you, if elaborate dance numbers in village squares and fantastical nightclubs and emerald-hued cities make perfect sense to you, and especially if you already love "Wicked," well then, you will likely love this film. If it feels like they made the best "Wicked" movie money could buy — well, it's... Read More