Martin Granger has seen all the self-righteous, over-earnest computer, dot.com and high-tech advertisements that have permeated the air waves over the past couple of years. So, when the opportunity to direct a send-up of these super-serious spots arose, Granger jumped, and shifted his director skills into overdrive. The result is ‘Pull My Finger’ and best direction kudos from this year’s Top Spots judges.

‘It was one of those situations where the script arrived on my desk and I knew it was going to be great,’ Granger begins. ‘You’d have to go a long way to [screw] it up.’

With earnest narration and choral music in the background, the spot for beer.com opens on a classic-looking farmer, seen against the sunrise as he works on his laptop. The picture moves to a generic boardroom, where cross-cultural business is clearly taking place. Next, as the absurdity picks up, a kneeling Asian spiritual/business leader flicks a beer cap, which, in slow motion, strikes the forehead of one of the disciples kneeling in front of him. Then an Intel-style, high-tech assembly line is pictured, where among the men in protective suits, two greased-up, gyrating, hard-bodied women in bikinis are bouncing on the line.

Finally, an African man extends a finger to a loved one, who gives it a tug. The resulting (silent but deadly) gaseous release forces a flock of birds to take off from a tree directly behind him. It closes with the narrator saying the oft-repeated line: ‘Are you ready for the future of the Internet?’

The spot, shot over two days at the end of August, was supposed to have the feel of being set around the world. However, the whole shoot took place less than two hours from Toronto. Even the ‘African’ scene was staged at a quarry in Ontario, with mounds of dirt standing in for rolling hills and a lone crew-manicured tree giving the shot a look straight out of the Serengeti. The flock of birds that takes off at the climax of the spot was produced in post with cgi.

Granger explains the thought process that went into the signature shot of the shoot: ‘We looked through every stock shot [of birds flying from a tree] ever made. Nothing. Then we thought, ‘Oh, we should get trained birds, put them in the tree and we’ll fire a shotgun.’ But we thought, ‘Well, we’d only get one take before having to wait for them to come back from Etobicoke or wherever they’re from.’ ‘

The biggest challenge on the shoot came as Granger worked to put himself in the mindset of a director who would be shooting the type of spot ‘Pull My Finger’ is spoofing.

‘Our instincts for casting were very different than what we envisioned ibm’s instincts would be, particularly for the people in the boardroom, for instance. It’s like, that’s what they’d do – they’d hire an Indian woman and a white guy and they’d lean in and talk to each other just as the narrator was saying ‘It crosses cultures’ or whatever that corny thing was,’ says Granger.

The spot was produced through Avion Films and created by writer David Chiavegato and art director Rich Pryce-Jones at Palmer Jarvis ddb. Beth Kolisnyk produced for Avion and Johnny Chambers for pjddb. Brian Noon edited at Flashcut and transfer took place at Eyes Post.

The success of the spot has provided some unexpected dividends for Granger. Turns out all those earnest companies the director so cautiously satirized are now interested in the young Canadian to helm their spots.

‘It’s a great opportunity for me as a director,’ Granger says. ‘Although we were spoofing it, now that it’s on my reel it is generating interest [for me] in that kind of [earnest] work.’ *