Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/78511
Cutting Comedy Spots has created one memorable — and highly quotable — commercial after another, all fea- turing the so-called Most Interesting Man in the World, who is shown doing preposterous things as a young man and as the mature man he is today. He doesn't always drink beer, but when he does, he prefers Dos Equis. In the recent Sea Plane spot his "small talk" during a Cold War chess match "altered foreign policy," he runs toward the bulls in Pamplona and it's said, "Sasquatch has taken a photo of him." In Sword Fight, he engages in dinner party sword play while clad in a kilt, is awarded first and second place on the med- als podium at a sporting event and sets up his painting easel in the African veldt within spitting distant of a posing rhino. least possible in post because Eric makes it look as authentic as he can when shoots it." Co3 colorist Tom Poole "emulates nega- tive to give the footage the look of a feature," he adds. "These spots have a totally different look from other commercials." Ferruzzo cuts on an Apple Final Cut Pro system. The most recent spots feature VFX by Flame artist Johnny Starace, who works in Outside Edit + Design's studio. "They shot two bulls on set for the running of the bulls segment but wanted more in frame so Johnny roto'd out stock footage of bulls and comped them into an 8mm camera shot — it was impressive!" The spot's music track is its signature. "We spent a month looking for music for the first bear and mountain lion outside," says Duff. Harold Einstein of Station Film/NY and LA directed the spots, lensing a real bear and a real mountain lion separately mauling the empty car. Then, plates were shot of the panicked couple in the car, the husband fran- tically screaming, "Throw the food out the window!" — twice — as the wife shrieks and stamps her feet. "The animals were phenomenal," notes The Cutting Room's Merritt Duff had a scream editing Bear for Carnival Cruise Lines. The humor comes because these tongue- in-cheek spots "are not played for laughs," Ferruzzo says. "They're as serious as we can make them; I look for the most real moments, the authenticity in things. I give a lot of credit to director Steve Miller (of Radical Media), who gives me 25 to 30 minutes of amazing footage to pick six shots from." Miller and Ferruzzo have been constants on the campaign since the beginning. "It keeps get- ting better because everyone respects it," says Ferruzzo. "They don't put their own stamp on it, they don't try to mess with it." Striving to make the absurd scenarios real keep the spots funny. "If you start to play for the silliness, you wouldn't believe them anymore and they'd fall apart," he explains. Montage cutting and storytelling are key, just as they are in straightforward narratives. "Whether something is comedy or drama, I treat it the same: Does it feel real to me? Do I believe it?" Comedy does "need to play for the beats a bit more," he admits, and it's the time between the edits where the comedy can shine through. For the campaign, DP Eric Schmidt shoots 35mm for the contemporary footage and turns to a hand-cranked Bolex sometimes to capture the vintage-style footage that depicts the Most Interesting Man in his younger years. "Eric studies the period [represented] and shoots it," says Ferruzzo. "I try to do the 36 Post • August 2012 campaign and ended up with a track our sound engineer Bret Fuchs wrote," Ferruzzo reports. "It was perfect." Ferruzzo cuts a lot of comedy spots and follows the mantra of "trust your instincts" to keep his clients laughing. "Usually, your first instinct is right. But you also have to be open to collaboration." CARNIVAL'S "LAND VS. SEA" Carnival Cruise Lines' "Land vs. Sea" cam- paign from Arnold Worldwide/Boston con- trasts a couple's camping vacation — and its ensuing disasters — with the relaxed, luxuri- ous ocean voyage they're enjoying this year. Its humor comes in the juxtaposition of the very different scenarios. Three spots illustrate the couple's attempt to cook over a campfire, pitch their tent and fend off a hungry bear and mountain lion that are mauling their car. "I love the juxtaposition via flashbacks of their memories," says editor Merritt Duff of Cutting Room (www.cuttingroom.tv). "This was the brilliance of the agency's concept. By the time we get back to the present, when they're enjoying themselves on the cruise, the resonance of those memories is that much more palpable." Bear offers the greatest contrast in the trio. "We go from the tranquility of choco- late-dipped strawberries and gazing at the sea outside the couple's stateroom to the heart of absolute chaos in the car with the www.postmagazine.com Duff. "There was a lot in the well to go to, especially for the bear. It could do different actions and hold various positions and open its mouth and show its teeth as if it were roaring. Everything I would have wished for it to do, Harold had captured in the film." Duff also had a wide range of perfor- mances from the human actors — "all pretty desperate," he laughs. "When the husband is yelling to throw the food outside he grabs the car seat for dear life. That always makes me laugh. And the wife's screams were pretty outrageous. When I was looking through the dailies, co-workers kept peering in my Avid suite to see what I was working on." Duff spent a lot of time working with Einstein and the agency creatives "to find the right balance of sound design" for Bear. "We needed to balance the animal roars and the people screaming, the sounds inside the car, outside the car, close to the car, far away — wherever the sound aided the comedy the best. For me, as an editor, sound design is huge. Sound design can bring a cut to life, and a well-placed sound effect can make a funny moment even funnier." Co3/NY's Tim Masick did the color cor- rection for Bear; the spot was finished at Brickyard VFX/Boston. Comedy is definitely something of a niche for Duff who, before he became an editor, was a film associate producer with Saturday Night Live. "I was in the film unit at SNL, work- ing on all the commercial parodies," he explains. "Coming up in that world, I gained a lot of sensibilities, honed my instincts and developed a sense of timing" that have informed spot cutting. His favorite part of comedy editing is "the joy that comes with opening a new set of dailies and laughing out loud watching them down. Then, starting to put the spot together and finding a place for those moments to live. Comedy is so subjective. Five different peo- ple can have five different ideas of what's funny. The goal is to have everyone laughing by the end of the process." Duff thinks editing comedy definitely comes with its own set of challenges, but he approaches each genre of editing the same way — "looking for performances that make me say, 'I believe it.'"