The stripped down site, MillerAuditions.com, through Young and Rubicam (Y&R), Chicago, has no bells and whistles, but plenty of punch with audition tapes from animals who have human voices. The likes of Michael Enright, who’s a raccoon, and a penguin who only identifies himself as Stanley, expound on acting and then audition for voiceover work in a Miller Lite commercial.
As someone off camera asks questions of him, Enright explains that he is from Manchester, England, and demonstrates his ability to speak with different accents from Jamaican to Irish. After answering a few more questions, he reads his lines about the virtues of Miller Lite.
Stanley, the penguin, has been acting for about 30 years. In a calm voice, he fills the casting agent in on his beginnings and how he has made it as a working actor. He attributes it to tenacity and focus and then reads the lines, “Great tasting, less filling, Miller Lite,” “Miller, good call” and “Miller Lite, with more taste than Bud Light and half the carbs.” Viewers can rate the auditions on a scale of 1 (poorest) to 5 (best). Then they can forward the links to friends. At press time, Stanley was in the lead with a 4.3 average.
Spike Jonze of bicoastal/international MJZ directed the Web films– “Casting Call: Bear,” “Casting Call: Penguin,” “Casting Call: Turtle,” “Casting Call: Raccoon,” “Casting Call: Otter” and “Casting Call: Goose”–and six :30 spots. One of the commercials helped Jonze earn a DGA Award nomination as best commercial director of 2005. (The DGA winner was Jonze’s MJZ colleague Craig Gillespie.)
“The volume of great interview material was simply too much to limit each character to a thirty-second spot,” Y&R senior producer Kim Mohan explained. “The animals needed to live and breathe in a longer format, so the Web was a perfect fit.”
Noting that spokes-animals are not new, Mohan explained that the strategy behind this initiative is to challenge Budweiser on all fronts including taste, carbohydrate content and talking animals. “Miller is all about the beer, not just the notion of talking animals as a marketing gimmick,” she related.
Though they appear incredibly lifelike, the animals featured in the work are puppets. They were shot in high definition and animated by puppeteers and animatronic operators from Edge FX, Burbank, Calif., and Animated FX, Los Angeles. The two shops are responsible for the puppets, puppet operations and animatronics. The puppeteers and rigs were removed in post by staffers at Filmworkers Club, Chicago.
To find the voices for these animals, the agency held casting sessions with Justine Baddeley and Kim Davis-Wagner, whom Mohan explained do not usually conduct commercial casting sessions. At the time, the talent didn’t realize that their interviews would become the voices of the puppets. From there, Jonze chose the actors who exhibited the most character and charisma and matched them with the puppets he felt fitting.
On why Jonze was the right director for the work, Mohan explained, “Spike has an uncanny talent for developing characters with likeability and depth. We wanted the best and we got the best.”
Thus far, people are learning about the site through word-of-mouth and the viral nature of the Web films. “It’s sort of a grassroots effort, so seeding it properly to keep it feeling under the radar is key to its success.”
