ANDREAS NILSSON RAPS UP NIKE

Furlined and Streetgang head to Sin City with promo director extraordinaire Andreas Nilsson as he turns his hand to commercials for the first time. It's a rapper's delight with tongue firmly in cheek as the mischeivous Swede mixes it up for Nike.

DAY ONE

I'm on an airplane listening to a track created by two guys from Portland called Mike and Brandon. It's about a shoe and a magical lifestyle that the shoe brings. It tells me to hyperize, not criticise. The song sounds like a 90´s rap interpretation by Cheech & Chong. Its stupidly clever, layered with 1000 years of wisdom and I love it.

The plan is to do a viral music video with the band The Hyperizers for Nike and Footlocker. Listening to the tune it feels like they want to bring some humour back into the brand. The band consists of 4 NBA stars who at this point don't know about the rap group or the project themselves. At the end of the shoot our goal is to have a TV two and a half minute promo pastiche and four 30 second spots.

I arrive in LA and go to meet up with the people at Streetgang and Furlined. They all look like they have taken splendid care of themselves since the last time we met. George Meeker looks like he's just walked up from the Malibu shore as the sixth missing beach boy, Di McArter looks regal as always and both of Jason Botkin´s legs are 100 per cent functional again after his skiing accident in Val d´isère in May. We celebrate that with a cup of tea.


DAY TWO

The next day its time to work. I ask the agency if they've made rap music with these NBA players before and they say no. But they have brought DJ Quik on board, the legendary 90´s rapper/producer who's worked with everyone from Tupac to Snoop.

DJ Quik calms everyone down by explaining how "every rapper wants to be an NBA player and every NBA player wants to be a rapper". He's clearly the coolest guy ever to have walked the face of the earth so we believe him.

Our plan is to shoot in LA. We've already decided on some specific characters that we're looking for. I met an albino gypsy called Cemenga on a boat a month earlier who I fell in love with. I tried to convince him to come over for the shoot but his mother wouldn't let him. So with that in mind our main goal is to find the LA twin of Cemenga. We manage to find Cemenga version 2.0 in a stand up comedy club. His name is Artaud van der Zeile and he is a black albino who tells a lot of good jokes and can break dance.


DAY THREE

The next day we contact the players to discuss our plans for the shoot. They like what they hear but can't make it out to LA for filming so we agree on Las Vegas instead and start thinking about how to move the whole production over there.

The prospect of Las Vegas is really exciting. My brother got married out there so I've seen a couple of vacation shots of the town but I've never been to Sin City before. It looked interesting. Obviously the change of location messes things up for line producer Jasper Thomlinson and exec producer Jason Botkin who've already got the ball rolling in LA but we're all optimistic the move will work out for the best.

Jasper and I hop on a plane out of LA. When we land in Las Vegas I think I'm hallucinating. The airport is covered with information, its all very intense. It reminds me of the fantastic film Idiocracy by Mike Judge. Welcome to Tesco, I love you.

When we step out on the street the heat is unbelievable. 45C. Jasper and I figure that we're standing by the extractor vent of a ventilation system and start looking for the source of the crazy hear, but we soon find out that this is the temperature Vegas has to offer us. I start to think about my own mortality, and how I soon will be dust in the ground and that the history of mankind is just a millisecond in the history of the universe. It's very hot.

I instantly start to worry about my obsessive rule of never wearing shorts. My spiritual guide Dr. Alban tells me its ok to wear trousers even if its very hot, its my own choice. I take his word and decide to keep the trousers and the sweaters on throughout my whole stay.


DAY FOUR

Jason arrives from LA accompanied by his frisbee kit. He never travels without it. He shows it to us and talks for a long time about the fantastic Frisbee golf court Las Vegas has to offer. We are all very happy for him.

In Vegas we start our casting and scouting again. Eddie, our scout, is a former drummer who gave up his day job performing in his Elvis tribute band in the 90´s to get into production. He knows Vegas inside out. We're looking for a fabulous villa where a garden party and some other stuff could take place for our music video. We visit Wayne Newton and take a look at his magnificent place. Wayne is a man who embraces excess and there are peacocks and monkeys running around in his world of paradise. What strikes me as the most interesting room is his cinema. All the furniture, and even the carpet, is covered in beautiful nicotine-yellow plastic. I try to fight the image that pops up in my head.

Next we head over to take a look at Liberace's house but we finally decide to go with a house owned by a weird mobster-vibe man called Nico. Art director Dave Wilson looks like he´s in trance when he enters the house. It looks like the Vatican mixed with Al Pacino's house in Scarface.


DAY FIVE

The next day in Vegas we're scouting for a basketball court and a studio. We find a great kids club in the worst area of Las Vegas. They are super friendly and it's a fantastic atmosphere there. It feels great to spend the time and the money in a place like that. We agree on taking all the kids on a bus tour to a fairground the day of the shoot.

Dave and his team create a studio inside the boys club that looks like the Ark-studio of Lee Perry and the rest of the scenes we shoot outside.

DAY SIX

After some phone calls back and forth we find out which players we're going to be working with. Kevin Durant is going to star as Velvet Hoop, Mo Williams will play Fog Raw, Andre Iguodala is cast as Chief Blocka and Rashard Lewis assumes the mantle of Ice-O. Unfortunately I don't know much about basketball so I've never seen these players in action, but I understand that these guys are like the basketball equivalents of Wayne Rooney or Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

I've been working together with the wardrobe and the stylist Nra Suwannath to get a loOo together. We want Mo Williams' character Fog Raw to be like the Mikk Mars of The Hyperizers, wearing some kind of black leather cowboy outfit. But we need to face the reality, working in 45C in a leather trench coat might be a bit too much to ask for. Fog Raw steps into a more casual, vintage outfit. Looks good together with his sixth finger.


DAY SEVEN

Jason has been up playing frisbeegolf since 6am, a routine he sticks to every day as part of a strict regime to hone his skills. I've never seen him play. No one in the ensemble has. He's very mysterious about his activities on the field.

Later that day we drive of to do some fittings. I love how the Ghetto girls look. After that we head off to go and see some call backs. Some of the agency crew has come in - Brandon Pierce, Mike Warzin and Tieneke Pavesik from Wieden Kennedy. I'm very happy to see that Mr. Universe had decided to show up. He looks very striking as he flexes and poses for us. He has pimples all over his chest, he says its from eating potato chips. We don't care, he is Mr. Universe. We also see a man that can jump rope with three people on his back. Brandon gets up on his back and jump rope man shows his talent. He is immediately hired.

Later that evening we all go out and eats some foie gras. Mike says it must be Fog Raw's favourite dish.


DAY EIGHT

Jason and I go to meet DJ Quik, Mike, Brandon, Tieneke and the athletes in a studio where they're recording the lyrics. The atmosphere when we arrive is pretty tense and I get the feeling that the guys might be nervous being in front of a mic for the first time. We listen as Andre Igoudala delivers an experimental take on the chorus that makes me think of the Shaggs.

Quik is laying layers of autotuner and different filters. As I'm standing there it occurs to me that these athletes are actually really brave stepping in and doing such a weird thing with us and putting themselves out there like that. Later that evening we hear the finished track for the first time. Tomorrow's our first shoot day.


Shoot Day 1

We're at the kids club ready to go. It's as hot as Satan's nostrils but the mood is up. I'm wearing a black sweater, black chinos and a hat. Under the hat I have a big wet towel. I look like an idiot. Everything runs as smooth as velvet cast but our schedule (which we knew was kind of ambitious) slides a bit. By the end of the day I'm very happy with the result. We get a great scene of the guys walking down a street like they're in an NWA promo. Throughout the day tons of people gathered to watch what was going on. We were in a pretty rough neighbourhood and suddenly there are these star athletes together with the cast of Dawn of the Dead and lights and cameras and all that.

We also shoot a quick improvised performance with Rashard Lewis together with the Quinn twins in front of a wall. The Quinn twins live in Vegas and are, so they tell me, regarded the fourth most beautiful twins in the world. I had twins as neighbours when I was kid. They were called the Nässil twins. I'm not sure what they are doing now.

The day ends with some night time basketball. We have a basketball technician with us on set called Aaron. I didn't know that profession existed. As someone who doesn't know that much about basketball it's great that he's there to discuss the choreography of the game. When he speaks it sounds like honey to my ears. He's like a basketball scientist. Aaron tells us he's writing on a book called Sick moves. I need to buy that when it hit the stores.


Shoot Day 2

We're in Nico's place. A stuntman's been hired to body double for Kevin Durant as he does a flip in a pool and throws a ball into another block and perfectly nets it. When the man walks in he is 165cm. Kevin is 230cm. Its a ridiculous and fantastic contradiction that I think will come across as an unpredicted joke in edit.

Pamala and George from Furlined have come in from LA to bring some new good energy. Later that day we do Fog Raw's performance in a locker room that Dave created in Nico´s own private bowling alley (I need to get myself a private bowling alley). The lighting is beautifully ugly, created by the DP Shawn Kim. It looks like Warren G´s Regulate promo - very theatrical with all the party filters included. In here we also have a group of senior showgirls.

Mo Williams performs extremely well, probably thanks to the massage he got from one of the extras

Shoot Day 3

The players have gone home. We do a couple of cut away scenes and then shoot Mr. Universe and another beefy guy driving around our senior showgirls in an alley on ATVs emitting purple smoke. A big man is offering a golden chain to a totem in a theatrical light. A ball being thrown through a window. A scene where Stan the coach is having a nervous breakdown on the street. Amazing footage.

Appendix

We've spent about 10 days in Vegas when we head home for the post work in LA. It feels like coming back to sanity. Editor Logan Hefflefinger at Final Cut is doing the edit. He is a great editor I think, obviously. I've never asked him what Hefflefinger means. I must remember to do that next time. The crew at The Syndicate handle the offline.

Finally I would like to say big thanks to everyone that worked on this project!