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August 2012

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Humor Cutting Timing is everything for editors working on funny spots. By Christine Bunish It may be apocryphal, but the phrase "dying is easy — comedy is hard" has some truth to it. Comedy can be a delicate thing easily lost if given too light or too heavy a hand. It spans a wide range of moods, from the naughty and playful to the dark and wry, so there's no formula for funny. That said, how do the editors of Liquid Plumr, DirecTV, Geico mobile, Dos Equis and Carnival Cruise Line spots make cutting comedy look easy? We'll let them tell you. LIQUID PLUMR'S DOUBLE IMPACT When Brian Lagerhausen of Beast San Francisco (www.beast.tv) began to cut Double Impact, a spot introducing Liquid Plumr's combo snake and gel system, he was faced with an embarrassment of riches. "It was almost a challenge because there was too much good footage," he recalls. "The actress was wonderful, and the guys were great." The character-driven commercial from DDB/SF recounts the hilariously risqué fantasy of a woman shopping in a supermarket for drain cleaner. She picks up a bottle of Liquid Plumr's new double-acting system and launches into a fantasy scenario in which the store's hunky deli guy and handsome produce worker appear at her door to snake her drain and flush her pipe. She utters a little squeal of delight as she closes the door and literally lets down her hair. They tutor her through a prod- uct demo then she snaps back to reality in the market where she spies the deli guy manning the cold cuts slicer and the produce worker sniffing a pair of melons and glancing melons and glancing in her direction. She loads her cart with bottles of Liquid Plumr and speeds off. Lagerhausen gives kudos to Clorox for "looking for something a bit out there" for its Liquid Plumr brand and to the agency for "pushing the envelope as far as they could" to produce a spot that was short-listed at Cannes and the Clios. "Once I got the dailies I thought the spot would never see the light of day, but everyone liked it right away and the approval process just sped along. Agency and client feedback was minimal for a spot as risqué as this one. They not only saw a good spot that cut together well and was funny, but they embraced the risqué nature of it." Beast's Brian Lagerhausen on cutting humor: "If you find the beats and moments that are spe- cial, you can take things to a new level." 32 Post • August 2012 Lagerhausen also credits director Clay Weiner of Biscuit Filmworks/LA with "knowing exactly what he wanted to get" to capture the tightly www.postmagazine.com

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