A woman is running and running and running through the city in Some Time Together.
No one is forcing her to run in this 1:05 web film created by the Portland and São Paolo offices of Wieden+Kennedy and directed by The Glue Society, which is represented by bicoastal/international Park Pictures. In fact, the woman could stop at any time, but wearing Nike’s LunarGlide+ 3 Shield shoe makes it way too easy for her to just keep on moving.
And that’s the point of the film. “The product we’re focused on is Nike’s LunarGlide shoe, which, simply put, is really supportive and comfortable. It means you can run more in these shoes. A lot more. Take that literally, and your friends and family would have to, well, adjust to your new lifestyle,” said W+K Portland copywriter Dylan Lee, noting, “We also aimed to highlight the fun of running.”
Thankfully, everyone we see in this obsessive runner’s life proves to be extremely accommodating.
Her parents run alongside her to let her know they miss her; her local barista dashes out of a coffee shop to hand her an espresso; and she doesn’t miss a second of choir practice because her fellow vocalists are willing to sing on the move.
The only person who seems concerned about this non-stop running is her boyfriend, who jogs next to her and confesses that he is worried they aren’t spending enough time together.
But the woman continues to run, and as the sun sets, her mom catches up to her and drapes a jacket over her shoulders. “Don’t catch cold, sweetie,” mom says as her daughter runs off into the night.
The spot ends with the tagline: Never stop running.
Absurdly believable “It’s a funny idea–that this girl lives her life running. I liked it as soon as I read it,” said The Glue Society’s Gary Freedman, who helmed this job. “It’s absurd but kind of believable at the same time. I like things like that.”
Casting the spot was a challenge in that the primary performer had to not only run but also act.
“The bar was set high. She had to be a real runner. She had to be a good actor. She had to be very likable so our hero didn’t come across as blowing off friends and family,” Lee said.
An actress/runner named Tiffany Sheppard won the role.
“She probably ran 25k in two days of shooting and didn’t complain once, so we were very lucky to have found her,” Freedman said.
FYI: Freedman is not a runner. He describes himself as “more of a slow walker.”
Freedman and his crew, which included DP Tobias Schliessler, shot Some Time Together in Vancouver, B.C., with production support provided by Vancouver’s Capital Media.
“It’s the first time I’ve been there, and I very much enjoyed working there. It’s quite similar in a way to Sydney, which is where I lived before New York,” Freedman said. “So I felt quite at home working there.”
Like the runner in the film, Freedman was constantly on the move. “The approach was to create this sense of continual motion, so we shot her with Steadicam from a little golf buggy,” Freedman shared.
“My main goal was to be as nimble as possible so we could reset and do multiple takes to get a range of performances. Of course, it’s never as quick as you’d like, but on the whole it worked well. In a sense, the biggest challenge of the shoot was that we needed to create the sense of her running in a lot of different places, so we had to do lots of small location moves in a limited time.”
Cinematic journey Guillermo Vega, a W+K São Paolo creative director who served as the art director on this project, credited Freedman with making the film a true cinematic journey.
“He wanted to show the runner was a real person running all the time,” Vega remarked. “He made the characters look natural, and that was what he wanted, too. He was also great to work with. We shot really fast and light, moving around the city to make the spot feel bigger.”
Editor Kyle Valenta of bicoastal Joint was on location throughout the Nike shoot, making valuable contributions, according to Vega.
“He was on production with us, so we were able to discuss edit options as we shot,” Vega said. “He was fundamental to the structure of the film, moving a couple of things around to make it more fluid.”
It was Valenta who came up with the novel idea to use the Nelson Riddle track “Lolita Ya Ya” to accompany the commercial.
“The track lets the dialogue come through, and it has just the right amount of quirkiness to help set the tone,” Lee said.
As previously noted, Some Time Together is a web film. Part of a global campaign, it’s running on Nike’s digital and social channels along with a series of interviews with members of the runner’s family and friends, also shot by The Glue Society.
In addition to the web film and interviews, Nike is supplementing its latest campaign with online “Never Stop Running” challenges aimed to inspire the Nike running community.
