Casting was the fundamental challenge on three new Campbell’s frozen soup spots from Radke Films.

The creative from agency Young & Rubicam called for transporting the audience into a kitchen with a couple of old buddies. Finding women who could create that comfortable feeling of old friends and at the same time add some humor, was the task at hand.

Following a casting call that covered Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto and l.a. and screening tapes of over 100 actors delivering flat lines with no comedic timing, they found funny ladies Kathy Laskey and Brigitte Gall in Toronto.

Shot on an ‘average’ budget over two days on location in a Mississauga kitchen, the three spots focus on the two young women, one a little excitable and the other more laconic and sarcastic, hanging out casually in the kitchen talking about the soup in a quick back-and-forth style.

Delivering their lines with just the right spin was no problem given the duo’s Second City backgrounds. It was harder to resist urges to improvise and they strayed a little from the original script to work out their own comedy timing.

According to agency writer John Farquhar, plenty of rehearsal time before the shoot enabled him to play around with the script, break up sentences and move things around so that it became completely natural for Laskey and Gall.

Unlike the loud projecting voices that are often heard in television commercials, Radke director Martin Shewchuk had the talent on these spots communicating in quiet voices to create an intimacy and draw the audience into the warm soup-scented scene.

In terms of the look of the spots, cinematographer Peter Hartmann shot them in a fairly standard storytelling manner, combining wide shots with medium two-shots and singles of each of the characters in a bright, wintry, sunlit atmosphere.

To give the commercials a softer look, Hartmann also used a split-focus lens which is designed to keep parts of the image sharp while giving the other parts a slightly out-of-focus look.

Shewchuk says he was just the ‘contractor putting the whole thing together,’ and once the characters were nailed down, the spots came together flawlessly in very few takes. ‘It was such a simple and funny idea where everybody knew exactly what they wanted.’

Agency art director was David Adams and producer was Doug Lowe. Radke executive producer was Scott MacKenzie, Sophia Peckan was the producer, Andy Ames of Panic & Bob handled the edit and Mark Stafford at Jungle Music looked after the audio.