Super villains are regular people too. They have kids, play poker on the weekends and think about retirement. But keeping their files in order is no easy task. Consider all their evil plans that need to be catalogued and sorted. That’s why someone interested in world domination needs a perfect place to store, share, and access files.
Such is the premise of a spot called "Lord Insidious" created by Portland, Ore.-based Elvis & Bonaparte for the online file storage site Driveway.com. The commercial, directed by Bennett Miller of bicoastal/international hungry man, sets out to demonstrate that all kinds of people—even super villains—need to be organized.
The :30 opens on Lord Insidious walking through his lair, surveying the work that is going on. He wears a purple cape and his head is shaped like a character from Star Trek. He begins explaining in a very earnest voice that being his own boss can be a challenge. He continues in this vein as we are taken through a day-in-the-life-of-a-super-villain sequence with Lord Insidious throwing a person off a catwalk, checking in on the deadly Hypnotron and waiting in line at the hot dog cart for lunch. In the spirit of product testimonials, he imparts, "I need to get to my files no matter where I am, so I use Driveway.com." Cut to a shot of Lord Insidious’ onscreen files, including "401K for Minions," "Honeymoon Videos" and "Hypnotron." He goes on to say that with Driveway. com, he can access his files from any computer, and knows that they won’t fall into the wrong hands. "Oh, I guess that’s me, isn’t it?" he reflects.
"Lord Insidious" is part of a three-spot package directed by Miller for Driveway.com, a newcomer among dot-com advertisers. The other two, "Svaakhammer" and "Wolfman," offer product testimonials from a no-name Eastern European band, and a man suffering from lycanthropy (a person who spontaneously turns into a werewolf).
"We work with a lot of high-tech clients, and they always expect a lot of exposition in their advertising. One thing [Driveway.com] was comfortable with was a user testimonial, so to keep it from being deadly dull, we came up with ‘Lord Insidious,’" explained Elvis & Bonaparte creative director Dave Helfrey.
"Actually, Dave just wanted to use somebody with a really giant head," said Elvis & Bonaparte copywriter Stacy Bolt.
In a way, Bolt was not too far from the truth. Helfrey, an avid comic book collector, got to live out a childhood fantasy with "Lord Insidious." "The whole DC Comics tradition, with simplistic techno words like "hypnotron," is so hysterical that it was really fun to create this world," he said.
For obvious reasons, the client didn’t want the spokesperson to be truly evil, so the production chose to create a more innocuous character. "He’s like the sheepdog from those Wile E. Coyote cartoons. When he’s on the job, he’s really fierce, but when he’s off the job he’s just this regular guy," said Helfrey. Added Miller, "He’s more like a self-important, used car salesman."
The creative team initially tried to cast a huge wrestler-type as Lord Insidious, but realized that wrestlers don’t always make great actors. Next, they went for an Alan Rickman-like villain, but found him to be too cynical. "After three or four rounds of casting, we were getting really stressed out; we couldn’t find anyone that could be the villain, but then pull it back and be the normal guy," explained Bolt. Fortunately they stumbled across a gentleman named Rick Hall, who wasn’t large in stature but could certainly play the part.
For Lord Insidious’ lair, Miller scouted out the Scattergood Power Station in Santa Monica. "It was hard [shooting there] because it was so unbelievably loud we couldn’t hear each other," recalled Miller. Because Scattergood supplies power to Los Angeles, there were stringent safety requirements and limitations put on the production. As a result, the entire shoot was accomplished in one day, including an extensive makeup and wardrobe session.
Makeup artist Gary Tunnicliffe, who created the makeup effects for Hellraiser V: Inferno, was on hand to create Lord Insidious’ special look. The boards originally called for the villain’s skin to be blue, but Tunnicliffe was quick to point out that that would make Lord Insidious look like an oversized Smurf. Instead, he suggested giving Lord Insidious a neutral pallor, which was saturated with color in post by colorist Jim Barrett of DownStream, Portland, Ore.
Hall wasn’t as tall as the agency had hoped, so it compensated by giving him a really big head and what Bolt called "five-inch Spice Girls boots." In addition, they only cast extras who were 5’4" and under so that Hall would look huge next to them. This was most noticeable in the shot where Lord Insidious is standing in line at the hot dog stand among his minions, who are dwarfed by their master’s hugeness. Just for fun, during breaks, Hall went out to the Interstate in full costume to see if he could hitch a ride, but had no luck.
To drive traffic to the Web site, the agency has made Lord Insidious’ files accessible to the outside world. One can go to the site and read his letter to "Baron Wasteland" that begins, "I wanted you to know that despite the outcome, I truly enjoyed our recent team-up against Major Mighty and the Justice Club…" Ah, the life of a world dominator.
