Okay, maybe Tony Soprano wasn’t breathing down their necks, but the creative team at Venables Bell & Partners, San Francisco, did feel some pressure when asked to create a commercial promoting the HBO Video release of the final few episodes of The Sopranos on DVD. “The end of The Sopranos was such a major cultural event, and there was this sense of trying to live up to that,” Venables Bell Creative Director Erich Pfeifer shared.
Ultimately, the agency did just that with a :30 titled “The Sopranos Lives On.” Conceptualized by Venables Bell Copywriter Paul Johnson and Art Director Keith Scott, the spot, which had to earn a stamp of approval from The Sopranos creator David Chase before it could go into production, cleverly taps into the enormous sense of loss that fans felt when The Sopranos ended its run last summer.
Directed by Simon McQuoid of bicoastal GO Film, the commercial finds fans of the show literally moved to tears by sights that remind them of the beloved mob drama. For one woman, it is the sight of a rolled up rug being tossed into a dump truck in an alleyway that makes her cry. Elsewhere, a man spots a train set in the window of a store and breaks down. Ducks swimming in his pool is what sets another guy off.
Pfeifer noted that while some of the scenarios–like the woman crying at the sight of the rug being disposed of–are generic, fans of The Sopranos will recognize that others are specific nods to events that occurred on the show. For example, the train set is meant to trigger memories of Bobby Bacala getting whacked while admiring a vintage train set in a shop.
Mob mentality For his part, McQuoid thought the concept was “corker.” (According to the Australian-born director, corker means remarkable.)
McQuoid said that his greatest challenge came in casting the spot. He didn’t want any fake tears and sought actors who could cry for real on demand. “There is a big difference between acting crying and actually crying, and that to me was the most crucial component of the spot,” McQuoid said. “If the actors came across as real and genuine, then I thought that it would ultimately be more powerful because we as human beings understand when someone’s truly upset.”
So, in the end, only actors who were really able to cry on cue made the cut, and the cast was comprised of Alyssa Cartwright, Jamie McShane, Paul Messinger, Shahrooz Nateghi, Raymond Parker and Al Vicente.
With their tearful cast in tow, McQuoid and DP Jo Willems shot “The Sopranos Lives On” on location in Los Angeles in one day. Great care was taken to make sure the performers were in the right frame of mind. The director instructed each actor to bring an iPod with music on it that would make them upset. Just prior to shooting each actor’s scene, he would sequester the actor alone in a room in a motor home parked right next to the set and summon him or her out right when it was time to roll. “I wanted there to be nothing getting in between them and their final performance,” McQuoid said, adding, “In between takes I couldn’t really talk to them much. It was a really interesting process. Normally, you say, ‘Okay, can you do that a bit quicker’ or whatever, but these guys were so sincere and so cut up during it that I never looked them in the eye. I just sort of muttered a few things and walked away [so as not to take them out of the zone].”
Up his alley If McQuoid had to choose one scenario as his favorite, it would be the sequence featuring the woman looking at the garbage truck in the alleyway. “I purposely put her in a white coat for purity against that sort of dingy, revolting alley,” McQuoid recalled, “and I liked that by sheer luck and coincidence a gust of breeze blew up as we were shooting, and it blew her hair around.”
“[McQuoid] composed everything so well. He gave us very simple, beautifully designed shots,” Pfeifer said, noting that the agency had wanted to work with the director for awhile and that this job was the perfect opportunity.
McQuoid and Willems shot the spot on 16mm film, by the way. Initially, McQuoid chose to shoot on 16mm for budgetary reasons, but after doing some research he realized that the film stock would give him the 1970s film quality he was looking for.
Colorist Tim Masick of Company 3, Santa Monica, “did a wonderful job on the transfer,” McQuoid praised. “I think when you’ve got the time, you’ve got to let him do what he does. He knows what’s current, and he’s a couple of steps ahead of the curve.”
Doug Walker of FilmCore, San Francisco, cut the spot. “Doug sent through several edits early on, and they all worked beautifully,” McQuoid commented.
John Nau and Andrew Feltenstein of Beacon Street Studios, Venice, Calif., composed the beautifully melancholy piano track that accompanies the spot.
While McQuoid enjoyed working on a project that had cultural relevancy, he admits that he had to study The Sopranos before tackling the job. McQuoid hadn’t actually been a regular viewer of the series. “I’d seen it, but I wasn’t really into it in a big way,” McQuoid confessed.
Perhaps his distance from the series worked in his favor and kept him from being too heavy-handed in his depictions? “Maybe,” McQuoid mused. “Maybe my distance from it did help.”
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