The two settings, like Lauren’s clothing, were starkly and simply rendered Clark recalls, "One was an abstract, stylized set which consisted of a perforated steel wall which reflected the light sources. The other was an actual living room interior in a very modern, contemporary house that was totally monochromatic. It sparsely furnished, with white walls, railings and angular architectural features that gave it a geometric, almost cubist look. There was nothing colorful on the set even the sofas were gray."
Rolling his 16mm black-and-white film while Metzner shot her modeling session, Clark felt like a jazz musician playing a variation on Metzner’s theme: "It’s almost as if there was a general notion of the score that was laid down. We started out with a certain riff, something we thought was right, and then I came up with solo reprises of Sheila’s melody. In a sense, I was trying to do animated versions of her stills, but sometimes with a slight variation on the theme to create an interrelationship between her stills and what I was shooting."
In order to be as unobtrusive as possible, Clark was determined to use Metzner’s existing still-shoot lighting almost exclusively, despite the fact that his chosen stock was not particularly fast. "Even though it’s a slower stock, I shot Plus-X because of its rich suppleness," Clark says. "Fortunately, Sheila never likes to work with flash or strobe lights; she works with continuous light sources so she can see and feel the lighting. The beauty of it was that she was using these new, innovative German-made HMI soft lights by Briese, so I had enough exposure to be able to use Plus-X. I had never seen these lights before; they’re cone-shaped and fold up like an umbrella. Sheila’s the only person I know who has them, so I was actually having a tremendous amount of fun experimenting with new light sources. I was delighted to work that way, because these soft HMIs were really quite sensational. I never would have thought of using them since they’re ’still lights.’ But that’s why I was able to tune into her frequency: I could see exactly what she was trying to do. It was a very interesting way for us to collaborate."
The duo’s approach was also impossible to script. Amazingly, no one from the ad agency or the client side tried to exert any control over Metzner and Clark’s improvisational approach to the commercial. This creative freedom came as a relief to the filmmakers, since any scripting might have destroyed their unique rapport. "The lesson here was to bring spontaneity back into traditional film work," Clark states. "There’s something about the process of discovery that happens on-set that is priceless. That’s not the way we normally structure film shoots, which tend to be more formal, but we carried that spontaneous way of working over into the proper, ’film-shoot’ side of the commercial. The agency and the client loved it and went along with it, which is not typical on film or commercial projects.
"The way we worked reminded me of some of the experiences I’ve had on documentaries, where I had to respond quickly to subjects and just capture various moments," Clark continues. "In a sense, that’s a metaphor for what happens on still shoots, because a great still is a captured moment. The challenge of this commercial was capturing these still moments, translating them into so many moving frames per second and creating an afterimage that would linger and synergize with other elements that existed within the film. That’s what makes great filmmaking."
[ continued on page 4 ]