A new power-charged spot for Nissan’s Pathfinder from Sparks Productions director/dop Sean Thonson turns the King of the Jungle on his tail in the wilds of – Los Angeles. ‘Antelope’ is the product of director Thonson and a TBWA Chiat/Day team consisting of creative director Jamie Way, writer Pat Pirisi and art director Benjamin Vendramin. Pirisi and Vendramin also served as associate creative directors.

Shot over three days just outside l.a. at Tejon Ranch (a favorite among Hollywood producers for its ability to mimic African landscapes), the ad has just begun airing nationally and announces Pathfinder’s upgrade to 250 horsepower.

‘As far as Nissan was concerned, this was a big development for them, to put a 250-horsepower engine in this vehicle,’ says Pirisi. To drive home the message, the creative team went with the tagline, ‘Power changes everything.’

‘When you have power, you have the upper hand,’ says Pirisi. ‘We tried to think of an age-old kind of paradigm about power dynamics, and we figured lions hunt antelopes and that has been the case for hundreds of years. The antelope doesn’t have a chance. We thought, given the Pathfinder’s heritage, with the African setting, we should nudge the king off his throne, so to speak, and turn the tables.’

The result onscreen is an African setting where a pride of lions is relaxing in the sunshine. A Pathfinder crashes over the horizon, sending the lions fleeing in different directions. The Pathfinder sets after the largest male, following it over hills and across a gully. The chase lasts 30 or 60 seconds, depending on the version you see. When it is all over, the driver’s door opens and out steps a proud antelope.

‘The 250-horsepower Pathfinder allows the antelope, in a kind of fun, cheeky way to intimidate and scare off the lion,’ says Pirisi. ‘We never see the antelope driving, though. That would have been kind of hokey. Can you imagine two hoofs on the steering wheel?’

Director/dop Thonson, who has worked with grizzly bears, deer and other animals in commercials, had his lens focused on a lion for the first time in ‘Antelope.’ He says one of the true challenges of the spot was getting the beasts to run.

‘Male lions don’t really run unless they are going to kill something,’ he explains. ‘Lions also spend about 22 hours a day sleeping, so that was a challenge, too. But the whole question of the shoot was would it run?’

Thonson says he and the creative team had to leave room for the unforeseen. ‘I’ve been shooting for years now, and it was almost like that first shoot again where it is really hard to sleep the night before because there are so many unanswered questions.’

The ‘Antelope’ team reportedly interviewed a number of lion trainers, all with different techniques. Some could get the lions to run but had difficulty getting the animals to do so with their heads up. The wrangler they chose realized the best way to get a lion to use its legs is to concentrate on its stomach.

‘What the trainer did was throw meat, so it was like a dog fetching a stick, which was really great,’ says Thonson.

The lion would run with its head up watching intently where the slabs of meat were being tossed. He adds that very little was done in the way of post effects to create the dangerous-looking shots of the lions with the Pathfinder.

Thonson shot separate footage of both the lions and the vehicle in action, locked off the shots, and blended them together later to arrive at what the viewer sees during a commercial break.

‘It was relatively low-tech,’ says Thonson. ‘There weren’t many high-tech special effects.’

Pirisi and the Chiat/Day team selected Thonson based not on his previous work with animals, but rather on his expertise and experience shooting car spots, including Toyota, Mercedes, Volvo, Ford, bmw and others.

‘[Thonson] has a lot of great car spots, but there are no real ideas [behind them],’ says Pirisi. ‘There are a lot of beautiful shots and great aggressive car shots, and we all thought his car stuff looked very dramatic and cinematic. We thought he could provide the kind of drama we had to bring to the story.’