Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/957795
22 DGA QUARTERLY PHOTOS: (TOP) COURTNEY HOFFMAN; (BOTTOM) SCREENPULLS: COURTESY PROCTER & GAMBLE H E N D I R E CT O R Alma Har'el was approached by Wieden+Kennedy to bid on directing the "Love Over Bias" spot for Procter & Gamble's "Proud Sponsor of Moms" Olympics cam- paign—the first woman to join a roster of directors that includes three-time DGA Award winner Alejandro G. Iñárritu—she jumped at the opportunity. It's "pretty much the dream campaign," Har'el says FOR ALMA HAR'EL, THE NOTION OF 'LOVE OVER BIAS' IS PERSONAL BY BECCA NADLER Olympic-Level Craft O N E F R O M T H E H E A R T W » Alma Har'el, with megaphone, and her produc- tion designer, JC Molina, were tasked with building a set resembling the ski course in Pyeongchang six months prior to the Winter Olympics for the "Love Over Bias" spot. in an email, noting that witnessing her own mother's hard work as a child gave her a personal connection. "I always tear up when I see these commercials." The resulting spot earned the Israeli-American director her first solo nomination for the DGA's Commercial Award in 2017. Though the seeds of the story—which focuses on athletes overcoming biases due to gender, sexuality, religion, economic status and disability—were already in place when she joined the campaign, Har'el had a slightly different slant: "I wanted to… capture a moment that takes us out of real- ity and into the mind of the child and their imagination," she says of the scene where an aspiring skier imagines jumping on her bed on top of a snowy mountain, which then becomes the site of her Olympic debut. During the rigorous casting process (which lasted more than a month), she looked for both actors interested in sports and "real people who went through similar situations" for authenticity's sake. "It was very important to me that the kid with a disability will be a kid who really did live with that bias and was an athlete," says Har'el, describing how she and her pro- ducer cast a young Japanese skier with a prosthetic leg. "We wanted to make sure… the details speak to the people who live with those realities." Because the commercial filmed before the Olympics, Har'el and her production designer, JC Molina, were tasked with building a set resembling the ski course in Pyeongchang "six months prior and under all their regulations," she recalls. She also worked alongside P&G to create sets that could tell a story with a glance even while advertising P&G products such as Tide, Always and Pampers. "I feel like the product is almost seam- less and hardly seen or featured in the FOCUS