The camera reveals a slightly ominous image: a white spider quickly weaving a silky web on a black background, accompanied only by a chewing sound. The camera pulls back to reveal that the spider has spun his web between two goal posts on a soccer field. The creepy critter is then shown in close-up, followed by the superimposed title: "Have you seen me? Major league soccer on ESPN."
Bizarre, yes, but there is nothing wrong with your television set—you are encountering a commercial directed by Stefan Smith, a 29-year-old designer/director with Santa Monica-based Miss Jones, a satellite of Windmill Lane Productions, Santa Monica. Smith’s work features dream-like images reminiscent of The Outer Limits. Though "Spider," a spot for ESPN out of Ground Zero, Marina Del Rey, Calif., is only a :30, its surreal, slightly disturbing imagery lingers.
"Spider" is unusual, but then again, so is the methodology behind its creation. Smith manipulated Discreet Logic’s Flame software to create images that most artists would have executed with more sophisticated computer graphic equipment. "[The spot] was made up of stock footage from Oxford Scientific [Films, Oxfordshire, England]," recalls Smith. "They sent us a fantastic reel of thousands of spiders weaving webs. Then I took still frames of the Rose Bowl, which was all daytime stuff, and made it nighttime. After that, we superimposed the spider."
Strand by strand, Smith removed one spider and its web from the natural environment in which it was photographed. To reshape and amplify the web so that it reached across the two goal posts, he had to draw new threads—again strand by strand. He then applied a Warp tool to infuse the new elements with the spider’s movements.
Smith employed another unusual technique in "Voices," a recent First Union commercial he designed and directed via Cook Marketing Communications, Jacksonville, Fla. The spot features moving lines and images of text, punctuated by a phone conversation between a couple of businessmen. As the two discuss the merits of joining forces with First Union, the lines and words form to create the bank’s logo.
Smith created the effect of fast-paced graphics by exploring the imperfections of software. He was beta testing a new version of Slo-Mo, a plug-in for the Flame that slows down footage shot at normal camera speed by creating morphs between images. Smith wanted to see what would happen if he fed an opening frame, followed by a blank image, into Slo-Mo. "I had no idea what it would do," he recalls.
The result, Smith says, "looked really cool. It was an explosion of digital data, and it was different every time." Smith used the deconstructed footage throughout the First Union spot, in which type spins as if caught in a whirlpool. When the Slo-Mo software was formally released, the manufacturer had fixed what it considered to be a glitch, but Smith retained his beta version for future use.
Audio Visual
Smith started off as a student at the Art Institute of Chicago, and left to become an audio engineer at Chicago’s Omik recording studio. By ’91, he was designer/director for JBTV, a music video program produced by now defunct JBTV. While there, he had his first taste of anything-goes experimentation—art-directing the episodes, designing animation and graphics, even shooting some of the concert footage that was integrated into the program. "I would pick up a band at the airport," Smith recalls. "Then they’d see me shooting a spot. Later, [while] on a tour of the facility, they’d see me doing graphics. It was weird."
But he feels eclecticism is a plus. "It’s good to have a rounded experience. It helps you understand people better and the challenges they have. It helped me when I began directing and started to assemble a team of people I would work with. If you understand what they do, you understand you’re not as good at lighting as the director of photography, but you know enough to know he’s good and you’re more comfortable with that."
Smith became familiar with hardware and software programs and experimented to achieve different looks. He created visual elements on his desktop computer and integrated them frame by frame into the video, utilizing fonts and visual effects from Photoshop mixed with traditional stop-motion and paste-up techniques. By ’94, Smith’s skills at manipulating images led to a job at Dynatech/Colorgraphics, then based in Madison, Wis. (That company is now called Dynatech and is headquartered in Salt Lake City.) There, he beta-tested software, trained artists and developed new products. Later that year, he changed jobs and became a Flame artist at Windmill Lane. He joined Miss Jones when the company formed in April ’99.
Smith also works as a live-action director, and recently completed a series of spots for The Arthritis Foundation’s Joints in Motion program out of JWT Specialized Communications, Dallas. On the design front, he recently worked on the soon-to-be-released Toyota Echo launch campaign via Saatchi & Saatchi LA, Torrance, Calif., directed by Meiert Avis of Windmill Lane. In order to create a throbbing effect in Rococo, a short film he directed and designed, Smith disrupted the field order of the video signal in postproduction. He applied a similar technique to the Toyota work.
Smith constantly experiments with software and pushes its capabilities. "It’s curiosity, mostly," he explains. "I fool around with it because I want to know what [the] tools I have can do. Usually, when I find a mistake or bug in the software, I take it and put it on the back burner. I remember it, and sometimes [a project] comes along to which it could be applied."
So far Smith has been allowed to improvise a great deal, but he realizes that may change as the budgets on his spots get bigger. "I generally take a much more experimental attitude towards my work. With higher budgets, I hope I can still experiment. Things can get outrageous if you add as much as you can and look at the context. I try to make things visually appealing, but you have to make sure the design and idea are solid to begin with. In the end, I want to feel like I’ve exercised every option. To my mind, the worst thing you can say is, ‘We’ve done everything we can do.’ "
