You settle into your seat, popcorn and drink close at hand. The house lights dim. Roll the coming attractions…
The scene on screen is ominous and dramatic as a convict, sentenced to death, marches down death row. Confident and cocky he informs the guards he is waiting for a call which will alter his fate. The suspense builds, and just as the switch is about to be thrown, a cel phone rings from the back of the theater (on two surround channels in Dolby sound), cutting through the tension.
The con breathes a sigh of relief while the cop turns to the camera, shining his flashlight into the audience: ‘That wasn’t the governor,’ he says, ‘it was just someone in the audience who didn’t turn off their cel phone.’
‘It’s not a promo but a program to limit the use of cel phones and pagers in theaters,’ says Robin Heisey, creative director at Gee Jeffery and Partners, who developed the 2.25-minute ad for Cineplex Odeon and Cantel at&t.
The spot, the second in an ongoing campaign, was directed by David McNally of The Players Film Company. The first spot to hit the big screen involves the diffusing of a bomb and was directed by Radke Films’ Eddy Chu.
Creatively, the crucial difference between a tv 30 and a two-minutes-plus theater spot is the audience, says Heisey. Moviegoers pay for an evening of entertainment, and even the best strategic message will bomb in theaters if it doesn’t have a high entertainment quotient, he says.
In putting together the creative for the Cantel at&t campaign, Heisey, writer and art director Don Embree (no longer with the agency), and McNally had numerous meetings as to the direction of the characters, the tone of the spot and how to most effectively present the idea to the masses without eliciting a sympathetic Dead Man Walking response from moviegoers.
McNally says part of what attracted him to the project was the opportunity to create what the audience would believe is a filmic moment, a movie trailer, and then pull the rug out from under them. As well, the lack of time constraints enabled him to ‘flex his creative muscle.’
McNally says longer format spots could help advertisers break through the ad clutter on tv.
‘What people are moved by are stories about people and not a hodgepodge of images crammed into 30 seconds. As long as stories are well written and well told the longer format on television would be more effective,’ he says.
McNally and fellow director Jeff Eamer are currently in the midst of putting the finishing touches on a few long-format proposals before heading to l.a. to meet with some people and discuss possibilities.
‘Doing movies would be wonderful and great,’ he says, ‘but I don’t have any problem with commercials, all I want to do is tell a good story.’
Barry Parrell was dop on the two-day shoot and David Baxter of Panic & Bob was the editor.