Craft Awards: Director & Cinematography, Steve Chase (director), Robert Gantz (cinematographer) Molson Dry (‘Desk’)

like the protagonist in the Molson Dry ‘Desk’ spot, director Steve Chase uses understatement when reflecting on the experience of bringing the vaunted spot to life: ‘It was a great idea and the execution went well. That’s all you can hope for.’

Chase and cinematographer Robert Gantz were just happy they were able to shoot the ‘Desk’ spot (which, of course, features a stylish city street scene interrupted by a desk flying from the window of a high-rise office tower, the manifestation of its Horatio Alger-esque occupant’s ‘problem’ with compromising his bred-in-the-bone belief in fair play) using a real building – the cibc tower on King Street in Toronto – and a real desk.

‘The coolest building in the city let us put a crane up on it,’ says Chase. ‘I was fully anticipating having to shoot plates and shoot the desk against a blue screen and combine them. Then I found out they were going to let me do it and I was like, Wow, I can shoot it all live. Beautiful.’

The desk was attached with wires on either side, motorized to achieve a tumbling effect and suspended at the 26th floor by the aforementioned crane. On Chase’s cue, the desk would free fall for 20 floors before brakes in the wires slowed its descent.

The nicest shot was when we hooked a descender rig on the camera and it came down alongside the desk,’ says Gantz. ‘I’m sure everyone thought we used a green screen.’

Chase also cued radio devices which jettisoned stacks of papers and (foam-core) drawers. According to Chase, the desk was dropped about 20 times over two days.

What about the shattered window? Surely curious onlookers wouldn’t have appreciated scalps full of glass shards. Chase says the initial shot which has the desk crashing through the pane was filmed on a set constructed to scale in a parking lot. The desk, now attached to a pole, was pushed through the window and desk and glass bits fell 10 feet onto pads and sound blankets.

Gantz says his challenge was to try and make the spot look great despite lack of sunlight.

‘Because the weather was so flat we decided to color it at the transfer stage,’ says Chase, adding that the desk had to be painted silver at the last minute to make it stand out. ‘We put contrast in, made it almost black and white and gave it a blue tint.’ The whole spot took two days plus a day of product photography.

Chase says the downtown pedestrian traffic was light on the Saturday and Sunday of the shoot, but he had to warn one bystander of falling drawers. ‘What other furniture will you be moving today?’ she wondered at the sight. TI