It’s amazing what you can accomplish in Vancouver with a network of industry friends, lots of ambition and creativity, and some strong directorial chops. Oh, and a helicopter.
That’s how aspiring director David Tenniswood became one of the 50 semifinalists, and the only one from Canada, still in contention for the final installment of the 10-year old Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” user-generated advertising contest from PepsiCo.
The ad, “Follow the Trail,” depicts a fantastical bedtime story about a young girl kidnapped by an evil henchman and tracked down—through jungles, across glaciers and atop mountains—by a heroic mommy following a trail of Doritos.
Once again this year, the winner of the Crash the Super Bowl contest will have their ad aired during the Super Bowl. This year, the winner also gets US $1 million and a chance to work with Zack Snyder, director of 300, Watchmen and the upcoming, much-hyped Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Tenniswood’s bold 30-second spot, shot over three days in October at six different locations for about $6,500, stars the city itself and the creative talent working there, he said.
“The Vancouver industry is a giant small town. Everyone knows everyone,” he said. “I wanted to not only use as many Vancouver people as possible, but we wanted to showcase Vancouver.”
Tenniswood, who has been working in the industry since 2009, thought of trying Crash the Super Bowl before, but wanted to wait a few years to gain the experience and earn enough favours he could call in to make something special.
It was Vancouver-based helicopter pilot Mischa Gelb, who had previously worked with Tenniswood on a music video, pushed him to try it this year. “Then I kind of went off the deep end making it as good as possible.”
His goal, he said, is to be directing more commercials—he’s got one national campaign for the University of Ottawa under his belt—and hopefully features after that. “So I figured I need something really good on my reel.”
He credits the initial idea for the ad as also coming from Gelb, who suggested something about a mom telling a bedtime story. Tenniswood liked the idea of a having a female Indiana Jones type hero. “I had just watched [The Secret Life of] Walter Mitty so I said let’s do something Walter Mitty-esque.”
Tenniswood reached out to a bunch of people for help, promising them only a percentage of any winnings though the scope and ambition of the project was also appealing. “As soon as you say we have a helicopter day on a glacier, everyone was like ‘Yeah, I’m in.’”
To shoot on the glacier, they flew up some supplies in the days ahead of the shoot—firewood, eight-man tent, bear mace—to create a base camp in case they got socked in by nasty weather. Then on the day of the shoot, they started ferrying people and equipment up at 7 a.m. and finished right at twilight.
The cast is from the series “Convos with my 2-year-old,” which Tenniswood has worked on, and everyone who joined the team wore multiple hats to get the shoot done, he said. “Mischa, our pilot, was also a grip and sound recorder… when actors weren’t on camera they were helping with wardrobe and gripping.”
They ended up with about 90 seconds worth of film they wanted to use but, painfully, had to cut it down to 30 for the final submission. Aside from falling off the cliff, which made the final cut, Tenniswood had his heroine chased by a shark—“We had it all rendered out,” he said—and surfacing on a mountain top lake. He’s working on a director’s cut that will include that.
Each of the 50 semifinalists—picked from 4,500 total submissions—gets $2,000. Their ads are under review now by a panel of judges including Doritos executives, with three ads making it to the final round of online consumer voting.
While the contest was once pioneering in terms of leveraging user-generated content, PepsiCo felt it was time to retire the contest after this year and move onto something new, said Susan Irving, senior director of marketing at PepsiCo Foods Canada, in an email to Marketing.
“When Crash the Super Bowl first began 10 years ago the concept really was ahead of its time. Social media was in its infancy and it was a bit of a gamble to put the brand’s biggest advertising moment in the hands of our fans,” she said. “Doritos has always been a brand that’s ahead of the curve so after 10 years, we felt the time was right to find that next generation program that would challenge our fans in new and exciting ways.”
