A dirty job

So, back around 2001 we did an ad campaign for a division of Abbott. It was an interesting (according to me) campaign that involved a very complicated (according to all involved) photoshoot. There was a sand-sculpture of The Thinker on the beach. There was a discus topiary in a garden. Finally, there was a giant snow-sculpture of Atlas in the snowy mountains. The idea was that tools shouldn't limit your talent. It was a brand campaign and it tested well.

We used a photographer out of San Francisco named Hunter Freeman. He's really good, check out his stuff.

Anyway, the first two were reasonably simple in the grand sense of things. We had scouts find us some good locations, a beach and a garden type of environment, you know, where you might find either a sandcastle thinker or a topiary discus thrower. Believe it or not, there exist stock plastic sculptures of both the thinker and the discuss thrower. We got them and modified them. We spray-mounted sand to the thinker and hot-glued plastic leaves all over the discus thrower. We shot them on location. Hunter had assistants that were constantly adding sand and leaves respectively during the shoot. Terrific. The only monkey wrench was the nosiness of the Cali beach wackos. Whatchoo guys doin'? Hunter's stock answer was that we were shooting a mayonnaise commercial. Not true, but for some weird reason, people would buy the answer and walk away. Cool, mayo. A helpful tip if you're ever on a photoshoot in public. You're making a mayonnaise commercial. Customize the answer to your liking. Maybe you want to be doing a mustard commercial. To each their own. I think it needs to involve a condiment, though. Otherwise, the wackos will add follow-up questions.

Finally, the Atlas image created different challenges. There wasn't a stock Atlas sculpture that we liked. What to do? We had it sculpted out of a styrofoam-like substance and shot it in studio. Throughout the sculpting process, I would get jpegs of the sculpture in process to look at and approve. Something wasn't quite right about the back arm (Atlas' right arm). They ended up resculpting it. His back arm was moved so that it was coming out of the side of his head. All that really mattered was that from our camera angle it looked natural. If I hadn't of had the arm relocated, it wouldv'e looked like it was coming out of his abdomen. Now that you know this, the sculpture may look weird, but to the unknowing eye, it worked. It's amazing how the angle and viewer perspective makes all the difference. For the background/location? There weren't any suitable (by suitable I mean snowy) locations to shoot a giant nine-foot tall snowman in the greater SF area. Hunter provided an image of a snowy scene that he had previously shot. We put the two shots together in post and it looked believable.

Fast-forward to today. I have a 5-year old son. Well, Boy and I like to watch some television shows together. We have a great time. We watch a lot of Discovery. Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, things like that. I DVR the shows and he gets to pick a show before bedtime. On this particular night, Boy chose Dirty Jobs. We're big fans of Mike Rowe, the host. Tonight on Dirty Jobs, Mike is at the San Francisco dump. He opens the show in the back of a pickup truck. If you don't know the show, Mike usually opens with some sort of monologue that romanticizes the particular dirty job he is about to perform. As he is waxing poetic on the trash collection industry, he pushes a piano out of the way. There it is. In the bed of the pickup. The upper torso of a giant white Atlas sculpture. Wait a minute, that can't be my Atlas, could it? Well, he is at the SF dump. And yes, we, the viewer, are focused on the back side of the sculpture. The side with the weird head-shoulder. He makes some comment about the weight of the world and then throws the thing out of the truck. The camera holds on the thing as it now lays on the ground next to the truck. And, scene. What happened to Atlas's legs? Who knows. I do know that the thing was so big at one point they had to saw it in half.

Take what you want from the story. I take the fact that all the bits and pieces that bounces around my head are in some ways intertwined. I have just defined the creative process.