Not to Be Missed!

What This Is: A treatment for a Britney Spears Pepsi commercial, aired during the 2002 World Cup, but only in Japan.
[A treatment, for those of you unfamiliar with industry jargon, is a 'summary' of the plot of a commercial, music video, tv show, film, etc.]

A Little Context: This treatment not only won the director and his affiliated production company the job in the first place, but was also, afterwards, presented once again to representatives of the top-tier advertising agency BBDO/NY and, for the first time, to the client, Pepsi International, the day before shooting began.
In other words, of all the treatments from all the directors who wanted this job, this was the one that won the hearts of high-ranking, college-educated executives at one of the biggest advertising firms in the United States. And neither the Marketing Manager nor the Creative Consultant at Pepsi International saw any reason to object to their choice.

The Director: This commercial was directed by Wayne Isham--a titan in the music video/commercial world--who worked for 'Mr. White,' a subsidiary of Quentin Tarantino's production company, 'A Band Apart.'

The Author: Directors are supposed to write their own treatments, but most working directors hire underutilized writers (also known as PAs) to write them instead. This is a result of most commercial/video directors being unable to write complete sentences, as well as a result of them being 'too busy.' Not sure whether Mr. Isham would want to take credit for this one or admit that he didn't do his own homework.

A Fact That You Should Know: Mr. Isham probably made in the neighborhood of $20,000 per day for his work on this commercial. He also had his own trailer INSIDE the soundstage, for no discernible reason, and was allowed to fly out several Los Angeles-based PAs to sit in said trailer and smoke weed and drink Jagermeister all day long. Mr. Isham joined his younger playmates in these activities frequently, but nobody noticed--he used Binaca.

The Text: VERBATIM, including typos, grammatical errors, a hundred missing commas, scarily uncool '@' signs, inappropriate empty spaces, etc. Rest assured that Goodtime Charlie doesn't make these kinds of mistakes.

Here goes:


"Our Pepsi spot is a roller coaster ride through a fantastically driven landscape of high energy. It is an explosion of energy that is nonstop from start to end. An energetic look @ The world's most exciting pop star combined with the amazing energy and fortitude of the world's best and accomplished soccer players. It is a juxtaposition of images and scale, expressionistic color, and a rhythmic weaving of multiple images.

The commercial is a carefully assembled big bang theory of amazingly choreographed dance moves combined with the amazing athletic prowess both in front of the screen and in the background. It doesn't make any linear sense, your mind is on the lose. It's coiled cohesiveness brought together with an explosive edit. Extreme close-ups blow out into galactic long lens shots with clever transitions to give the whole spot a constant movement. A vibrant color palette packed with an adrenaline pumping energy.

Our ride begins on a seemingly infinite huge white canvas. It is a space with no definition. Off in the far distance we see a glimpse of a female kicking around a soccer ball. Her identity is unknown. She kicks the multicolored red white and blue PEPSI soccer ball straight @ camera. With unbelievable speed, the ball comes straight at us, hitting the screen and taking us into a vortex camera move right back into the moment, revealing our female soccer star to be none other than Britney Spears.

We achieve this action of the soccer ball with a 3d soccer ball that is texture mapped with the real ball's movement and texture.

Britney, kicks into singing and dancing in her signature sexy-style Britney soccer outfit enhanced and designed by her wardrobe stylists Kurt & Bart. Her dance is a combination of both awesome Britney steps and unbelievable soccer moves. Wade Robson, Britney's choreographer will help us to design these unique moves.

As we pull out, we reveal, around her are pixilated huge images of the world's greatest soccer players in today's game. These images will be edited and enhanced in post production. Our soccer heros are stylized graphic portraitures behind and around Britney. The look is inspired by the great pop explosion of Lichtenstein and similar to what we did in the beatbox section of NSYNC's video POP.

We will not treat the footage exactly the same, however, it will be a similar approach. It is a modern approach to background projection. The magic of this spot comes to life in post production. We will design and experiment with the graphic dot pixels enhancing the already amazing footage given to us. This soccer footage is seen ceiling to floor with a unique efx used to enhance their motion.

We will film Britney against a huge green screen cove over a two day period. The first day we will rig, prelight, and bring Britney in for a brief fitting of her wardrobe and harness apparatus. We will achieve amazing soccer moves combined with original dance with the help of a stunt harness. With the harness, we can achieve the PELE moves that are desired. As she bumps the ball with her foot, knee, and then her head, combined with the infamous bicycle-kick our ball crashes into the screen seamlessly becoming a spinning PEPSI logo. ASK FOR MORE...

This Pepsi World Cup 2002 spot will have an explosive impact on television. It will have a uniquely choreographed style that is expressed through the energetic fun attitude of Britney.

Our camera is voyeuristic, invading the moment of fun. It is an abstract visual, combining Britney and the World Cup's finest. It will have a graphic fluidity both in an intimate and grand scale. Thus, creating an organic balance between the extravagance of motion, color and texture."


Goodtime Charlie Says: Wow. Have you ever heard so much bullshit? Can you imagine turning this in as a junior high writing assignment? You'd totally get flunked, drop out of school, drink heavily, never get laid, become a drug addict, and somehow use this to your advantage as you worm your way into the lucrative LA film industry--a scene always on the lookout for another dude 'from the streets, who tells it like it is.' Favorite sentence--"Our camera is voyeuristic, invading the moment of fun."

Reality Check, From the Set: Britney--who was a sweetheart, by the way, and very sexy--stood on a large stage, in front of a greenscreen, moving her knees up and down. Offstage, a female college soccer player bounced a soccer ball from knee to knee, as Britney's $3500/day choreographer (Wade Robson) clapped his hands every time the ball touched the soccer player's knee. Britney's job was to fake bouncing a soccer ball on her knees, by timing her knee-lifts to the audible hand-claps; the soccer ball would be added in post-production, by highly-trained special effects personnel who would charge a lot of money to do so. Behind her--ie, that which replaced the green of the greenscreen--footage of soccer players like David Beckham, Ronaldo, etc. would be playing. The End.

[Editor's Note: I could have performed Wade Robson's duties just as effectively, and for less money. And you wonder why a can of Pepsi costs MORE today than ever before, despite the decreased cost of ingredients and higher sales volume?]

Bottom Line: Even bullies as dumb as Biff check through and rewrite the homework McFly did for them. So, whether he wrote it himself or had someone else do the work, Wayne Isham is clearly a bottom-of-the-barrel idiot. An idiot who is probably worth millions of dollars. [Not the first-Ed]

Further Reading: If you like a good laugh, feel free to peruse a pretty hilarious interview with Mr. Wayne Isham. Copy and paste the following link into your browser:

http://www.boardsmag.com/articles/magazine/20010901/isham.html