drives Chrysler spots

But for the liquid nitrogen, the blanket of crushed glass flanking the gleaming car, the suspended sheets of Mylar and the shards of dichroic glass, it could have been a run-of-the-mill shoot.

To call this advertising event run-of-the-anything, however, would be doing a disservice to its eclectic, energetic and relentlessly creative director Jim Edwards.

In Toronto (and parts vaguely north and west) to attack four Chrysler spots earlier this month, Edwards shot seven action-packed days with an uncompromising, inventive style and technique that left many on the production crew with jaws bouncing.

Production house Dalton Films invited Playback to what was apparently the least eventful day of the week’s worth of lensing – in-studio shots of a gleaming black Chrysler Cirrus, as compared with the airborne gymnastics and pyrotechnics on the schedule for some location days – and even it was a revelation in itself.

Edwards, who calls l.a. home, was Toronto agency bbdo’s choice to direct a pair of 30s and a pair of 15s. The spots should launch sometime this fall. Looking at Edwards’ reel and previous car spots, it’s easy to see that if the ad shop wanted a dynamic, youthful, abstract collection of images to bring the product to life, Edwards is the right choice.

On set, he is quiet in executing his task, allowing craftspeople full head in doing their jobs. But at the same time, he offers them a new set of tools to work with. These tools contribute to an unique array of in-camera special effects and a style tricky to mimic. The crushed glass, spread about on a cellophane sheet beneath the car, the Mylar screens suspended at two angles beside the car and the use of liquid nitrogen combine with a roving spotlight to create flash and mystery, smoothing and rumpling its surfaces with dancing points of light and ephemeral shadows.

While the camera is being reloaded, Edwards points out some of his effects devices – all for in-camera, rather than post, use. There are slivers of dichroic glass, which exhibit different colors as they transmit light and can be held in front of the camera or lights to vary the effect. There is a hollow cylinder made of a black material featuring slits at regular intervals. Inside, more glass bits are arranged; they will also split light passing through the cylinder and transmit color. And Edwards has set the Chrysler logo in the middle of a special plate-sized, mirror-like piece of glass. He then points to some copper colored reflective fabric over past the car set and muses that he’ll be wrapping this ‘around Canada’ on the location shoots, in the style of visual artist Christo wrapping his objets d’art.

Why do all this, why create a new dimension from which to consider the product? ‘To provide the audience,’ says Edwards, ‘with a point of view that’s different, to say the world’s not as dull as you might think it is. The process of driving’ can be different, he argues, on a purely emotional level. So he exploits color and light and form. ‘It’s all an illusion anyway so why not make it a grand illusion, make (viewers) want to see it again because they enjoyed the ride.’

Edwards, who had a reputation as a first-rate editor in the u.s., says he became a director because ‘I had to. I wanted to gain more control over the pictures, the filmmaking.’ Still, he insists that in the edit suite, he’s not the editor’s worst nightmare, but his biggest fan. ‘I give them direction, but I don’t tell them how to do it.’

You wouldn’t necessarily guess by observing him from a distance that Edwards would bring such an artistic, unbounded approach to the shoot. With his mid-thigh gray cotton shorts, white t-shirt and running shoes there is no overt hint of the unbridled creative mind. (Well, as one famed agency type once mused, there is the fact that he wasn’t wearing socks…) But the love of the work shines through in his enthusiasm and energy, his easy candor.

On the second set-up, with a filmy plastic screen hanging behind the car and a back-projected moon above the Cirrus, Edwards gives instructions on how the foggy liquid nitrogen must flow. While he waits to see that the shot has worked, he continues encouraging his crew…

…and directs an aside to an observer: ‘Like the difference between writing and typewriting, as a good director you learn to wait (for what you want), you learn to simplify your shot list so each one is a major shot.’

Step-by-step-by-step, Edwards relishes it all, and invites various members of the crew to jump out of their usual roles – executive producer, production assistant, whatever – to contribute an effect here or there. Bringing everyone possible in on the action.

Then, waiting for effects expert Laird McMurray to rev up the nitrogen fog for the next take, Edwards jokes with a passing pa about how he eats peanuts from the shell, and the shell, too. ‘I was born with teeth like cows,’ he tells her earnestly. It takes a moment, but soon it dawns on her that he said it only for the, uh, effect.