If you have been to the movies or tuned into HDNet lately, you may have seen a delightful Bridgestone spot called “Lucky Dog.” Created by The Richards Group, Dallas, and directed by Kinka Usher of House of Usher Films, Santa Monica, Calif., the :60 is set in a quaint Italian village and finds a homeless dog wandering into a garage, lured by the smell of food.
As the hungry little dog (named Pebbles) approaches a bowl of meat, a big dog lets him know in no uncertain terms that the food is his. Afraid for his life, the little dog jumps inside a tire and starts running, propelling himself through the streets as other dogs give chase.
Eluding the pack, the dog and the tire roll through the open door of a butcher shop just as the proprietor, who doesn’t see the invader, is closing for the night.
Finally safe, the dog steps out of the tire and surveys his surroundings, realizing he has hit the jackpot when he sees all of the meat around him.
“For drivers who want to get the most out of their journey, it’s Bridgestone or nothing,” a voiceover intones.
For his part, Usher found the rags-to-riches journey compelling.
Straight away, the director made “Lucky Dog” better by tightening the story, praised The Richards Group associate creative director/copywriter Mike Duckworth, who conceptualized the spot with associate creative director/art director Peter Everitt. They originally envisioned a longer, more complex journey that would take the dog from the countryside into town, but Usher thought it best to keep the dog’s travels within the confines of the village “so that viewers wouldn’t get lost along the way.”
Street smart
With the story refined, Usher and his crew, including DP Max Malkin, shot “Lucky Dog” in Orvieto, Italy, which was both a beautiful and manageable location. “It was the only time I’ve ever done a three-day shoot and never gotten in a car,” Usher shared. “We were able to walk to every location. It was fantastic.”
Orvieto also had sloped streets that were steep enough to roll a tire down but not so steep that the tire moved too fast. There was a balance to be had speed-wise because Usher needed it to appear as though the dog really could be running inside this tire.
While the dog, who was flown to Italy, does jump into and runs inside the tire for real in the opening moments of the spot and is inside it in the final seconds, the rest of what we see is an illusion created by a team of artisans at Method Studios, Santa Monica, led by VFX supervisor/lead 2D artist Alex Frisch.
Method’s contribution was crucial, Usher said, noting, “It was critical for the viewer to believe that the dog is in the tire.”
As for how the effect was achieved, Usher first shot the tire rolling through the streets of Orvieto, simply pushing it through the streets himself. Later, at Sony Studios in Culver City, Calif., Pebbles was filmed running inside of a circular treadmill in front of a blue screen, with care taken to match the speed of the treadmill to the speed of the tire that was rolled through the streets in Italy.
To make the match precise, the circular treadmill was actually placed on a hydraulic platform that mimicked the angle of the Orvieto streets down which the tire traveled. Method later composited Pebbles inside the tire.
Duckworth said that the three-act story played out in “Lucky Dog” provided a solid framework for editor Tom Muldoon of Nomad Editing Co., Santa Monica, to work with. But the real challenge came in nuancing the journey–portraying the dog as being a bit out of control as the journey begins, then picking up confidence and control as it goes on.
Great debate
One of the matters debated during the edit was whether the dog purposely steers the tire into the butcher shop or makes an accidental–yet fortuitous–turn. In the end, it was decided to make it ambiguous. “We liked the idea of the viewer wondering, ‘Did he steer in there, or did he get in there by chance?’ ” Duckworth said, noting, “What really matters is that the tire took him somewhere he wanted to be, which is the story we wanted to tell.”
It was a story that was almost told during Super Bowl XLII, by the way. “Lucky Dog” was part of a three-spot, Usher-directed Bridgestone Super Bowl package. Intended as a :30, it was clear after “Lucky Dog” was shot that the spot was worthy of :60, and Bridgestone had only purchased two :30 time slots during the big game, Duckworth explained.
So the client ultimately decided to run two :30s–“Scream” and “Unexpected Obstacles”–during the Super Bowl and place “Lucky Dog” in theaters and on HDNet.
Given its cinematic look and feel, “Lucky Dog” plays well in theaters and on HDTV. But, in hindsight, this wonderful underdog story would have been perfectly placed on the Super Bowl, Duckworth mused, adding with a laugh, “But who thought the Giants were going to win?”
