Aubrey Singer is an L.A.-based, Toronto-bred director who comes to the set with an eye for edgy comedy and, where required, a shoestring on each foot. Aubrey is repped in Canada by Industry Films of Toronto.

Of course, once the camera is rolling, you’re in deep trouble if you’re not laughing. But during prepro, a ton of thought goes into manufacturing the ridiculous. Few commercial directors see the day when they must select the right gold tooth or the most realistic looking zit. No one ever thinks about saying, ‘Cue the ass-scratch,’ or ‘We gotta have more skid mark.’ Yet all of this and more went down during the recent production for Canada Reconnect’s new TV spot.

Of course, this was all for a second or two of exaggeration and humor to make a point: not having a phone is just plain weird. The premise is simple: our hero doesn’t have a home phone, so he must make ‘calls’ by yelling from various windows of his home. The offering: if you’ve been cut off, Canada Reconnect can hook you back up. The target: people who ‘forget’ to pay their bills.

A phone is like a fridge; civilized human beings MUST have one. Otherwise, you’re perceived as weird. I’m not saying it’s right. That’s just the way it is. So it takes a certain kind of someone to let their phone bill go through the roof such that Bell or Telus has to cut them off, and Canada Reconnect has to hook them back up. In fact, the only bill that probably gets paid is the electricity and the cable. It’s not that they’re broke. They’re just ‘selective.’

We took it even further. In our world, people let their front lawn go to hell and forget to wipe their behinds. They communicate by shouting from their windows. They are Dax Lough.

Dax Lough is not the name of a mythic Welch haggis (and with a name like Aubrey, I should know). No, Dax is actually the actor who portrayed ‘Bobby,’ the hero in our spot. In fact, he is a theatrically trained thespian from Scotland. One minute he gets a call from his agent. Next thing he knows, he’s scratching his ass in front of the whole country. My, the world has changed since the days of Shakespeare, hasn’t it? Anyway, Dax was amazing, plain and simple.

I tried to get as much from Dax and the location as possible. I made sure we had at least three more scripts from the idea and that Dax had enough fodder to improvise with. With budgets under the gun, it’s essential that the agency gets enough great material for the client and for their reel. We set out to shoot one spot and we walked away with six. Three are going into immediate rotation.

I use the term ‘I’ because the client came to me first, and so I had to be responsible for making his ‘challenged’ budget work hard on all fronts. Canada Reconnect usually spends around $10K on their spots. So this was a big leap for them on all fronts.

I came up with some rough ideas and then went to Publicis to help me take the ideas to the next level. Art director Anthony Wolch was instrumental in crafting the ideas and came up some great bits, like having the guy put his head through a window. Unfortunately, Anthony didn’t get this brainstorm until we were wrapped. But I just couldn’t let it go. We had to have that shot. So, I talked the client into giving me a little more money to execute the shot, and we did get it, thanks to a skeleton crew and Dax, who was ‘itching’ to do more.

Kudos go to Canada Reconnect, which had the balls to try something bold. Sure, some will complain. But the fact is, not having a phone is just plain weird, and even Shakespeare probably had skid marks. And he was a genius. So there.
Credits
Client: Canada Reconnect
Production company: Industry Films
Producers: Jen Haltrecht, Paul Geitlich
Agency: Publicis
Writer: Aubrey Singer
Art director: Anthony Wolch
DOP: Cory Wilyman
Editing: Greg Edgar, Stealing Time
Post: The Lab and Command Post
Sound & music: Louder Music