REPOST - NZTA And Finch Show How 'Mistakes' Can Have Consequences

How did you get involved in the NZTA project?

The agency and I had worked together over a year ago on the NZTA 'Flying objects' spot. The previous spot was very much about the impact of an accident and what it does to your body, this script was the exact opposite, what lead up to the impact was important and the emotional not physical impact, so in a weird way it was a kind of prequel.

The concept is incredibly powerful. How did you feel when constructing your treatment? Was there anything that needed adding?

Emily the writer had this concept that was very in line with the kind of 'third person' perspectives on the world that I really like. I just wanted to tell the story simply and without too much technique. First concern was that the time-shifting device did not feel sci-fi, the tone needed to be serious and mature so it couldn't feel like a gimmick. I was also afraid of it feeling like a demonstration video or something 'educational', you lose the viewer if they feel you are preaching to them, so I focused the treatment on the emotive angle. The one thing I saw the first time I read the script was a kind of POV of the boy looking at his father while the other car is frozen then suddenly rushes towards them in real time - the expression on his face and the knowledge of violence about to occur - it's an artificial idea, yet it needed to feel real so I just worked backwards from that moment.



NZTA has a history of strikingly good PSAs. Were you anxious about following on?

Well the agency has done such great with this client, but I think each spot has to live on its own and work on its own, we never had to compare it to anything that had be done because I felt it was quite different. I think the main concern is that this particular message came across clearly and people get it.

A spot like this lives or dies on the acting from the central characters. How did you draw such good performance from both of them? How vital was the casting process?

These two actors are remarkable; Karlos Drinkwater (who played the father) and Tim Foley (speeder) both understood the feel of it instantly. We had a long callback with many takes so they had built up to a point in pre-production where everyone knew the beats to hit. They came prepared and did the hard work. Not many commercial clients want that level of drama and rawness, so there was such a freedom in being allowed to go to that place, but on set everyone was relaxed. There is a big danger of this type of idea being overly dramatized or sentimental, I just wanted these guys to feel like they were really in the moment, experiencing it and just trying to make sense of what was happening. These two realise that a stranger is suddenly the most important person in their life, it's an intense moment to play out and they got there.

How was the shoot? How long did you get?

We have our Finch Auckland office which managed the two day shoot just enough to achieve the multiple takes of every angle because of post-production background movements of the vehicles. We were concerned about wind, because the backgrounds for every shot during the 'freeze' needed to be static or seemingly unmoving and I didn't want to greenscreen the performance shots. But fortunately our angles framed by Stefan Duscio's (DOP) allowed us to avoid any obvious background motion during the pause time.

It quickly became clear the challenge was to work out the fine details of the accident itself: the father's mistake, the distance between the two cars, the speed of the car, the hesitation in breaking, the speed of the impact under full brake. All these physical details needed to be worked out and shot to represent that. I am really glad we all did that work because a lot of discussion online is about people debating fault, and we made sure the physics were correct.

The special effects are both subtle but perfectly judged. How important was it for you to get the frozen motion right? Did it add many complications to the shoot?

I didn't want to draw attention to the direction too much, if people said 'that looked cool' then weirdly we hadn't done our jobs. I wanted to play down the frozen moment effects as much as possible, as I wasn't really interested in 'showing off' to the audience visually because that's been done so many times. An example is the frozen 'bird' in the tree - putting that in the foreground felt forced and artificial, I attempted to remove it from the edit, however Justin Bromley (FIN Design Flame Artist) and I eventually found a more subtle position for it. That was a critical moment for finding the tone of the visual effects, frozen time is oddly beautiful, but maybe it's because of the small details not the obvious.



The tone of the film is understandably somber. Did you worry about how it would be received? Were there many variations in the edit?

Being honest and emotional with the tone was the point. Clemenger and NZTA take a lot of risks with their advertising and it works. I think the only fear was that there is a kind of 'genre' of safety campaigns that exploit the viewer by just showing disturbing disaster and anguish, I think most people can get turned off by that - this was a different angle. Drew Thompson cut the 90 and the 60 in just two days. He is very quick and really is the best editor. Everyone was waiting to see what would come out of the 'research' testing. Turned out the offline was their highest research score ever, so it did go smoothly after that.

The ad has exploded online, with numerous blogs and sharing sites lauding it. Did you expect the reaction?

Internally at Finch we were excited, but it's too hard to predict how people will react online. We are proud of the spot but really its good news for NZTA's message, I think for a community to embrace a government message like this is unique.