comm.bat films director David Storey is on location at the York University track. It’s 8:30 a.m. and he’s waiting for the lead in the Helene Curtis Degree antiperspirant commercial he’s shooting with dop Doug Koch.

He has the scene all set. The athlete will demonstrate the rigors and pressures of training as he runs around the track and works out with weights. Cut to the locker room. Shots of the media waiting to bombard him as he steps out the door. Exhausted and stressed knowing the hounds await him outside, the star holds the antiperspirant. The next board, showered and dressed, he is confident and in control, ready to face the press.

The creative concept comes from DDB Canada art director Chris Gilbert, writer Scott Bradford and producer Martha Scandrett.

‘We had gone over the spot with his manager and everything was cool,’ recalls Storey.

Sounds like a simple shoot, or no sweat, one might say.

It is until the star sprinter, Canada’s pride and joy, strides onto the track and announces he can’t do any running today. He’d been up till 3 a.m. giving a speech in Ottawa the night before and had to catch an early plane to Toronto. This is his down time from running and he has to be careful.

‘Is there any way we can get around me running?’ he asks.

‘Not run? We had based the whole commercial around his training,’ Storey recalls. Not to mention, what’s a deodorant commercial without someone working up an exuberant amount of sweat.

So what d’es a director do when the principal character won’t cooperate?

When the talent is Donovan Bailey, you let him have his way.

‘We didn’t want to mess with Bailey’s body,’ laughs Storey. ‘I mean we didn’t want to be responsible for him losing to Michael Johnson.’

Storey did some quick thinking. The solution: have Bailey dressed for training, sitting and then walking along the track, reminiscing about past glories and the pressures of the fans, the press and his performance. To his credit, Storey did manage to get Bailey to run on the spot.

And Storey says the the modified shoot worked better than the original idea. ‘Everyone expects to see Bailey running so this adds a different dimension,’ he says.

Some unique camera angles and moves bring the simple boards to life. Storey’s experience directing music videos lent creativity to the spot. Swing-tilt and 10mm wide-angle lenses and the dolly and dutch head rev up the energy. ‘I wanted a really funky feel to it,’ he says.

Storey also experimented with film textures which add a unique element and set the spot apart from the typical antiperspirant commercials bombarding tv viewers. Black and white, infra red, color and desaturated color are intercut, adding another layer to the roving camera shots. Working with editor David Hicks at Panic & Bob, Storey ‘fiddled with film textures to make it more exciting and lively, to catch the eye.’

As Bailey opens the locker room door, the scene is lit by the flash of cameras and the chaos of mikes jammed in his face.

‘We shot infra-red close-ups of Bailey talking to the press and when you see the lights pop, the flash hal’es and makes it go really white,’ says Storey. ‘We shot it on the Mesmerizer, which gives it a kind of wonky feel and adds to the sense of pressure. It demonstrates this is the breaking point.’

Storey says that despite the initial dilemma, Bailey was great to work with. ‘He was a little tired and grumpy from being up so late the night before. But as the day wore on he was lots of fun, loved to joke around and was really easy to communicate with. We only did one to three takes of everything.’

To top off the day, as Bailey and Storey sat talking between takes, they looked up and who was jogging down the track towards them but Ben Johnson.