To some, Angel Films director Aubrey Singer’s ‘Lightning Strikes Again’ spot for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind is shocking. The 30-second PSA for the CNIB’s first lottery fundraiser is currently airing across Canada and is generating some great response for the client.

‘CNIB realized that the Heart and Stroke Foundation had a lot of success with their lottery, so they decided to do one as well,’ Singer says.

The spot follows a man walking his large dog through a park during a thunderstorm. As the announcer describes the prizes and the odds of getting hit by lightning (as compared to the 1 in 20 odds of winning the CNIB lottery), lightning bolts repeatedly strike the man.

Originally, the spot was to have included several animations symbolizing the different prizes and providing contact information. From the start, Singer knew the animation could detract, and when he took the problem to the team at Publicis, they concurred.

Singer explains his argument: ‘The agency and I were in total agreement when we saw it. In theory, on a static storyboard, when you have animated icons running down the side, the picture’s not moving and it looks cleaner than it actually is. And then you shoot it and actually do all the work. So by the time we were in post, we’d show the client and say, ‘Look, there’s too much stuff here. You’re trying to tell a story, you’re trying to show prizes and you’re trying to show a 1-800 number. The consumer will walk away not getting any of it.’ ‘

Not only was the December shoot day in Vancouver ‘probably the only sunny day of the entire year,’ it was also the last day before snow fell in the city. Despite the need for a thunderstorm, Singer was pleased to have daylight to work with, and chose a location that would facilitate an easy sky replacement in post.

‘It was fairly technical,’ Singer says. ‘You had to really match your shots well and be locked off in certain cases because they would have to paint it. The great thing was we had a tree line in the background, which could obscure the skyline a little bit. It meant that we didn’t have to go really crazy with sky replacement and painting it because we could use a gradual filter and darken the sky and paint over it, or just put a sky in.’

The selection of the dog was a classic choice between large and small. Singer had access to both a Jack Russell terrier and a big bullmastiff. ‘The Russell has been used so much that we decided to stay away from that. And the bullmastiff’s got such a great face on him,’ he explains. Actor Peter New, a specialist in physical comedy, was cast in the human role.

The young director’s attempts to scale back on the animation also left room for CNIB to ‘update’ the spot. ‘Every time they sell 10,000 tickets, they put a banner on the ad saying ‘Almost sold out,’ ‘ Singer says.

The spot, through Publicis, was written by Allen Forbes and art directed by Inna Gertsberg. Kristen Woods was the agency producer.

Executive producer Sarah Ker-Hornell led the Angel team, which included producer Andrea Kikot and DOP Robin Miller. Marc Bachli edited the spot at AXYZ. Peter McAuley was supervising editor while Andres Kirejew supervised the online. Sound was completed at Einstein Bros. by Rocco Gagliese. The colorist was TOYBOX’s Walter Biljan.

The great response the spot has received is not universal. According to Singer, some victims of lightning strikes were offended. ‘Any commercial that gets noticed tends to be provocative, one way or another. Somebody out there is going to have a problem, no matter what. There are people out there who have been struck by lightning and find the commercial a little bit disconcerting,’ he says.

Singer attributes his success on the spot to the empathetic relationships he builds with the creative teams and clients on his jobs.

‘You just have to know how to get from a marketing point of view to a communications point of view, not a cinema point of view, because clients don’t understand that,’ he says. *

-www.angelfilm.com

-www.cnib.ca