Mini - Man Boobs - (2010) :30

Q&A with OPC’s Woods + Low:

Q: This is a quirky campaign. Tell me what attracted you to it.

A: These boards came along and we freaked out. We loved that they were just simple and fun. They weren't out to change the world, just to make people smile. It was one of those moments where we had to ask ourselves, "do we want to see where this leads?" Of course our answer was yes....I mean how can you ignore scripts like that?

Q: This your first comedic campaign, yes? Tell me about how this experience was different than your past work.

A: Yes it is. We've been trying to expand our horizons into comedy for a while now but understandably it’s difficult to convince folks you can do something thing when you can't prove you can do it, ya know? We are forever grateful to Alana Nathanson (writer), Mike Blanch (art director), Lance Martin (CD) and Kevin Saffer (producer) over at Taxi 2 for trusting us to handle these.

For visual work, which is usually what we do, you often cast for people that look a certain way, emit a certain tonality or personal history through their face. Whereas for this campaign we needed the best actors we could find with the right look for the spots. It was a very intense casting process.

The hardest part of this job was to treat these insane scenarios as if they were normal and just let them play out in an uncensored way. Quite often actors tend usually to overdo it and reining them into a place where these pieces were just allowed to breathe and be funny was the toughest part. We were lucky to find the talent we did and we have Michael Stevenson and his hard work over at Fade to Black to thank for that.

Q: Tell me about the man boobs. Is that animatronics or was it done in post?

AIn the end we simply puppeteered Rob's (the actor) actual boobs. We built rigs consisting of bras filled with cooking oil and so on but when it came down to it the thing that looked the best and the funniest was using what God gave him. There were some very strange conversations and moments where we'd catch ourselves taking the subject perhaps a little too seriously.

Q: Anything else I should know?

A: The actor in the moustache spot actually shaved his eyebrows...which we kind of couldn't believe he agreed to.

Client: Mini Canada

Agency: Taxi 2, Toronto
Creative Director: Lance Martin, Patrick Chaubet
Art Director: Mike Blanch
Copywriter: Alanna Nathanson, Étienne Théberge
Broadcast Producer: Kevin Saffer
Director: Woods + Low
Production Company: OPC, Toronto
Executive Producer: Harland Weiss
Producer: Dwight Phipps
Director of Photography: James Gardner

Editorial Company: Posterboy, Toronto
Editor: Griff Henderson
Audio: Grayson Matthews, Toronto
Music ("Man Boobs"): The Midways
Compositor/Online: Andres Kirejew, AXYZ, Toronto
Colourist/TRansfer: Bill Ferwerda, Notch, Toronto