Film crews–well, the best ones–are efficient, problem-solving machines able to make the impossible possible. And if film crews ran weddings, often problematic affairs requiring complex choreography, the ceremonies would go off without a hitch as we see in a spot titled “Wedding” that promotes Nextel Direct Connect, Sprint Nextel’s instant push-to-talk network for succinct calls.
Created by San Francisco’s Goodby Silverstein & Partners and directed by Jim Jenkins of bicoastal/international O Positive, the clever, fast-paced :30 finds a bride surveying the scene of her outdoor wedding and bemoaning the rain. That’s no problem for the crack producer running her wedding. She presses a button on her cell phone, which is connected to the Nextel Direct Connect network, we hear a chirp, and it goes into walkie-talkie mode, allowing her to quickly tell another crew member, “Lose the rain.”
He obliges, stopping the flow from a water truck. “No rain, no rainbow,” he says. Moments later, the bride’s mother asks the producer for an update as to how the overall wedding preparations are going. Referring to a TV screen with pertinent GPS data, the producer is on top of everything, reporting, “The cake is en route, the tulips just arrived.”
Using her Nextel Direct Connect-equipped phone to check in with another crew member, the producer discovers that the groom has cold feet. That’s no problem, though. The producer summons the stunt groom, and a hulking crew guy picks him up and deposits him at the altar. After getting a gander at the handsome stand-in, the bride is beaming.
The spot ends with a V.O.: “Get work done now. Nextel Direct Connect with GPS tracking–only on the Now Network.”
Chirp alert
Explaining the thinking behind the Sprint Nextel campaign in general, “We wanted to celebrate the blue collar ‘get er done’ work ethic that is the bedrock of this country,” said Goodby group creative director Paul Stechschulte, noting, “The product [Nextel Direct Connect] helps workers who generally don’t have the time or the desire for chit-chat to communicate instantly–we wanted to associate hearing the chirp with knowing something’s going down right now.”
Film crews certainly know how to get things done right now. “We knew that we wanted to use a film crew before we had the right situation for them to inhabit,” Goodby senior copywriter Steve Payonzeck shared. “That stems from our experiences on set–when you’re working with a great crew, things just get done, sometimes as if by magic. And when the unexpected happens, they deal with it, which dovetails perfectly with the campaign.
But rather than place the film crew in the expected setting, which would be a film shoot, of course, Goodby decided to have the crew run a wedding, an event that because of logistics and emotions running high presents plenty of opportunities for things to go awry, Payonzeck said.
Directorial choice
When it came to marrying a director to “Wedding,” Goodby proposed O Positive’s Jenkins take on the assignment. “There are a lot of reasons why Jim was the right director for this,” according to Goodby art director Jack Woodworth. “He immediately understood the overarching story, but maybe more importantly the subtle intricacies to get the most out of the script/cast. Even on shoot day, he kept trying to push the script and cast to make the spot tighter and smart with stuff both scripted and unscripted.”
Jenkins and his crew, which included DP Bob Gantz, shot “Wedding” on location in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. at Wayfarers Chapel overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
The weather could have been better for the two-day shoot. “It was never quite as sunny as we needed it to be, and that was the biggest headache…It’s always perfect out there, and we got two days when it wasn’t,” Jenkins said, adding, “The spot ended up looking pretty good considering because whenever the light was good we shot what we needed to shoot.”
Most of the action was captured in-camera, although Brickyard VFX, Santa Monica, later put in the sun that shines down upon the wedding after the producer puts a stop to the rain.
The brawn of the actor playing the crew member carrying the stunt groom to the altar allowed the scene to be done sans rigging. Jenkins shot that funny scene a few times and ultimately found that it clicked when the actor playing the groom held his body stiff as a board. “When I had him treat himself like he was some sort of prop, it got a lot funnier,” Jenkins said.
Jim Hutchins of HutchCo Technologies edited the spot. “We knew from the script there would be distinct shifts in pace as the spot plays out–an accelerating rush leading to a sense of calm,” Payonzeck said. “There’s a lot of story being told within 30 seconds, and Hutchins was able to craft a sort of mini-screwball comedy out of it all.”
