Familiar Names Top List of Super Bowl 45 TVC Makers
Hungry Man, Smuggler, MJZ, Anonymous, The Mill, Sound Lounge and Elias are among the big providers of production, VFX, post and sound on the most-watched game in history.
Top Directors and Prod Co's Grace History-Making
Super Bowl XLV Broadcast
Hungry Man, Smuggler, MJZ, Anonymous Content, The Mill, Sound Lounge
and Elias Arts are among the big providers of Super Bowl production,
VFX, post and sound on the most-watched game in TV history.
By Anthony Vagnoni
So the Super Bowl 45 scorecards are all in – Ad Age, USA Today, Fox Sports, even the PTA has probably weighed in with its rankings of Super Bowl ads. We're sure you have your own opinions. To check out who filled out the top ten at USA Today's AdMeter poll, you can click here. (To check out the AdMeter rankings for all the Super Bowl spots, click here.)
We all know who came out on top in the ad industry popularity contests - spots like Lance Acord's "The Force" spot for VW out of Deutsch L.A. was widely touted as a charmer, and Eminem's appearance in the Chrysler "Born On Fire" spot from Wieden + Kennedy, directed by Samuel Bayer via Serial Pictures, was also frequently cited as a winner in the blogs that followed the game.
Interestingly, a number of the spots that were submitted as part of consumer-generated ad contests ranked high with audiences, including one that tied for first place. This spot, "Pug Attack," in which a guy teases his girlfriend's dog, scored the same as Bud's canine-themed "Dog Sitter," in which a guy house sitting for a friend puts his dogs to work serving Bud Light at a house party.
Other consumer-generated spots that scored in the top ten of the USA Today poll include Doritos own take on house sitting, in which a guy uses crumbled Doritos to bring back Grandpa from an urn full of ashes, and two Pepsi Max spots, "Love Hurts" and "First Date."
But overall, who were the big-time professionals from the production, post and visual effects ranks who lined up on either side of the ball? We knew you'd ask.
SourceEcreative has collected all of the game's TV spots and has done a less-than-scientific count of who did what. Based on that, here are some of the top players on Sunday's big show, which has, according to Variety, clocked in as the highest rated Super Bowl broadcast ever and the highest-rated TV show in history:
The top director was Bryan Buckley of Hungry Man, who was represented with work for six clients, including Audi's luxury prison spot "Release The Hounds"; Best Buy's "Outdated World," starring Ozzy Osborne and Justin Bieber; BMW Mini's "Cram It In The Boot," the game show parody contest to see how much crap you can stuff in a MINI trunk; CareerBuilder's "Parking Lot" chimp fest; McDonald's funny "Proud Papa" spot, in which father and son bears go out for burgers and fries to celebrate a great report card; and Teleflora's "Help Me Faith," featuring Faith Hill and a guy who digs his girlfriend's 'rack.'
As for production companies, Smuggler tied Hungry Man with six spots on the broadcast, contributing two Hyundai ads from Stylewar, "Deprogramming Ad" and "Hypnotized," along with work from Ivan Zacharias for Bud ("Outlaw"), Filip Engstrom for the Chevy Volt ("Once in a While") and two spots from Randy Krallman, "Empower the People" for Motorola's Zoom, with its nod to Apple's 1984, and AT&T's "Funny Emails," which broke earlier this year.
Anonymous Content was also represented with work from five of its directors: Frank Budgen, who shot Chevy's "Ms. Evelyn," in which off-screen voices describe the perfect Camaro commercial; Christian Bevilacqua, who shot the NFL "Gadget" spot; Andrew Douglas, who directed the BMW "Defying Logic" spot; Christian Loubek, who directed the BMW "Changes" spot, which touted its advanced diesel technology; and Peter Thwaites, who directed the "Welcome" Mercedes Benz spot (starring P. Diddy) via Gorgeous @ Anonymous.
MJZ's directors worked on five spots. This list includes Dante Ariola, who shot the VW "Black Beetle" spot; Tom Kuntz, who directed the Carmax "Kid in a Candy Store" romp; Jim Gilchrist, who directed the other Carmax spot, "Gas Station"; Blue Source, who directed the "Changed My Life" spot with the cross-dressing guy for Living Social; and Rock Morton, whose 'test baby' got a lot of attention in the Home Away "Ministry of De-Tourism" ad.
Additional production companies with multi-spot representations in the game included:
Furlined, whose Adam Hashimi directed the Coca-Cola "Border" ad, in which border guards out in the middle of nowhere bond over a Coke; the Perlorian Brothers, who shot both Cars.com TV spots, "Go First" and "Reviews are In"; and the team of Speck/Gordon, whose Chevy Trucks commercial, "Tommy," shows a loyal Silverado that thinks it's Rin Tin Tin and keeps warning of danger.
Biscuit Filmworks was represented with three ads on the game: Noam Murro's Kia "One Epic Ride" spot, Tim Godsall's "Al's Chevrolet" for Chevy and Christopher Riggert's "Transformation" for Acura. (Our apologies for leaving them off an earlier version of this article!)
O Positive's Jim Jenkins shot the Snickers "Logging" spot with Richard Lewis and Roseanne Barr, the sequel to last year's Betty White/Abe Vigoda classic. He also directed the email nightmare "Reply All" spot for Bridgestone, which the esteemed Steve Hall over at AdRants says generated more internet buzz (via Twitter and other sources) than any other Super Bowl spot (see the entire list here); and Hyundai's "Anachronistic City," in which people walk around in a present-day setting sporting old technology and gadgets.
For sheer prevalence, it seems you couldn't watch a spot that wasn't worked on by The Mill. Between its offices in London, New York and L.A., The Mill worked on a massive number of spots, including the two Bud Light spots from Harvest Director Baker Smith, "Product Placement" and "Dog Sitters," as well as Bud's "Outlaw" spot, Bridgestone's "Reply All," both E*Trade commercials ("Tailor" and "Cat," directed by Elma Garcia via Space Program), the Home Away "Minister of De-Tourism" spot, Best Buy's "Outdated World," Hyundai's "Deprogramming Ad" and "Hypnotize," Mini's "Cram It In The Boot," Audi's "Release The Hounds," Coke's "Border," Stella Artois' "Adrien Brody" and both Cars.com spots. Whew!
But wait, there's more. In addition, The Mill created the NFL's "American Family" commercial directly for Grey Worldwide in New York; the spot features classic scenes from TV sitcoms in which the characters have been decked out in NFL team apparel.
As with The Mill, Sound Lounge, the New York-based audio facility, also had a fader or two in quite a few TV spots. The studio's roster of talent that deployed for the game included Mixer Philip Loeb, who mixed the NFL's "American Family" spot, along with Bud's "Outlaw," both Carmax spots and Mercedes Benz's "Welcome," and Tom Jucarone, who mixed Snicker's "Logging" spot and who teamed with Mixer Peter Holcomb on BMW "Changes" and "Defying Logic."
Elias Arts, the New York and L.A.-based music production shop, created original music for five spots on the game. The list includes Bud's "Outlaw" spot, Audi's "Release the Hounds," Chevy's "Once in a While" and "Status" (the latter directed by Dayton/Faris out of Bob Industries) and BMW's "Defying Logic."
Other Super Bowl standouts include a variety of editorial, visual effects and music houses that played key supporting roles in the creation and completion of spots shown during, before and after the game include the following:
Framestore handled visual effects on three TVCs: its New York office worked on the two Carmax spots, "Kid in a Candy Store" and "Gas Station," from Amalgamated, while it's London office provided VFX for the epic "Seige" spot for Coca-Cola, produced by Nexus for Wieden + Kennedy.
Cut + Run worked on the "Borders" spot for Coke, cut by Steve Gandolfi, the "Ministry of De Tourism" spot for Home Away, cut by Jon Grover, and the two Hyundai spots directed by Stylewar. For this campaign, Dan Swietlik edited "Hypnotize" and Jay Nelson edited "Deprogrammed Ad."
Arcade Edit had three spots on the broadcast, Chevy's "Tommy" and "Status" and Teleflora's "Help Me Faith." They were cut by Editors Paul Martinez, Kim Bica and Patrick Griffin, respectively.
Editor Adam Pertofsky of Rock Paper Scissors cut both Cars.com ads, while Editor Angus Wall cut "Anachronistic City" for Hyundai. Also providing creative editorial for a pair of ads were editors of The Whitehouse; Stewart Reeves cut Acura's "Transformations," while Matthew Wood cut Allstate's "Snow Mayhem," directed by Phil Morrison of Epoch Films. Union Editorial's Jim Haygood cut both VW spots, "The Force" and "Black Beetle."
VFX house Animal Logic provided visual effects for two spots, "Transformation" for Acura and the ginormous "One Epic Ride" for Kia, which was directed by Biscuit's Noam Murro.
Music house Human provided the music for two Supe' 44 spots, Acura's "Transformation" and Bud's "Dog Sitter."
740 Sound participated in Audi's "Release the Hounds," VW's "Black Beetle," Chevy Volt's "Discovery" and Chevy Cruze's "Status" with sound design by Eddie Kim and Andrew Tracy and Chevy Silverado's HD "Tommy" with mix by Tracy.
Other notable achievements include Believe Media Director Chris Applebaum teaming again with Kim Kardashian, this time for Skechers (the two worked together before on a spot for Carls' Jr.), and Reel FX/Radium, which did the animation for those cute Salesforce.com spots with the animated Black Eyed Peas, "Cloud Interview" and "Impossible Things." Bot spots were produced by will.i.am's Dipdive Productions.
This is just a sample of this year's great Super Bowl creative, see the full list of Super Bowl XLV spots with their credits in out spots search section and using the keyword SuperBowl2011x.
Published 7 February, 2011
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