Put yourself in this spot. You and your buddy are on the Pacific Ocean, stranded on a rickety wooden raft and left for dead. The only sustenance left on the ‘vessel’ is one lone can of Bud Light, trailing in the water to cool. Just then, your buddy notices a warship in the distance. Seemingly saved, you reach for the Bud Light. Your friend, however, also has designs on the beer and a colossal struggle ensues. In the melee, the strong sunshine reflects off the shiny silver can and flashes what appears to be a coded message to the warship in the distance.

With the gung-ho American navy captain misinterpreting the reflection as a call to surrender, the warship opens fire and blows your raft, your buddy and the beer sky high.

This is the nightmare scenario played out in the Bud Light spot ‘Raft,’ voted this year’s Top Spot. Directed by Canadian Eddy Chu and created out of DDB Needham, Chicago, the spot was produced by Chu’s American representative, Backyard Productions. (In Canada, Chu is repped by Radke Films.)

The advertisement, shot early this year over two days just before the Super Bowl, is part of Budweiser’s yearly production crunch. Apparently, before the big game, the Busch family gets a reel with ’20 or 30 commercials’ for their viewing pleasure.

Chu offers what he believes happens when Augustus Busch and clan get the reel. ‘Over a…weekend they say, ‘Hey, yeah what do you think Dad?’ or ‘Hey, what do you think son?’ They have a lot of fun.’

‘Raft,’ with post completed after the Super Bowl, did not air on the big game, but was a regular commercial break contributor to such highly rated shows as Survivor.

The production of the spot itself presented several challenges for Chu, who was participating in his first major u.s. shoot.

First was the inherently moist nature of this particular production. With the original plan calling for two days in l.a., the budget made its first jump from the medium to high range when it was determined it was ‘too cold for the actors’ to shoot in l.a. where the battleship was located. Thus Chu shot one day in l.a., capturing all the battleship scenes, and then took the raft shoot to the warmer waters off Hawaii. Unfortunately, Chu’s dop John Schwartzman was unable to go to Hawaii due to a previous commitment – shooting the Michael Bay feature Pearl Harbour. (Wouldn’t want to go to Hawaii to shoot that, eh?)

In any case, Chu employed a different dop, fellow Canadian Barry Peterson, for the Hawaiian portion.

For the resourceful Chu, the double dop was no problem. ‘If there was ever a production that two cameramen wouldn’t jeopardize, it would be this one. Actually [Peterson] didn’t even see the footage from the first [day],’ Chu explains.

Also, Chu says his impact on lenses and filters helped him keep the images consistent.

Besides the need for two locations, working in the water created several other problems for the Canadian director on foreign seas. Not only were the actors cold and one of them ‘not too happy,’ the production itself posed a real challenge for Chu. ‘Anytime you have to secure anything to keep the raft in position, or you want to put anything around it like a camera or a light, it is moving. You can get one shot but then it will change.’

Safety concerns forced Chu to employ ‘about six divers underneath the raft with ropes that secured it.’ The ropes were later removed in post.

Not only did Chu have to contend with the weather and the water, but also with the glut of American agency personnel who sat in on the production.

‘It was a bit overwhelming,’ says the director. ‘They had a junior creative team, a senior creative team, plus executive creative directors who were on the shoot. One person would say one thing and another would say another. It was quite the experience. And intimidating if you’ve got four or six guys saying, ‘Well, what do you think of this?’ I really had to defend some of the choices I made. But all in all they’re a good bunch of people and I would love to work with them again.’

Chu’s ability to work closely with the agency creatives also allowed him some input on the final edit of the spot. In fact, he had an editor in Toronto cut his own version of the ad, and sent it to the agency in Chicago where a middle ground was found between the agency edit and the director’s cut.

With more Bud on the horizon, Chu is currently back home in Toronto finishing a job for Italian dot.com CiaoWeb. *