One of the wittiest commercials in recent memory is the new Orkin campaign featuring giant bugs (a cockroach and termite) trying to talk their way into people’s homes. The spots were produced by Bob Industries for The Richards Group agency, and directed by Zach Math, who reports that the big challenge was creating photo-real characters with personalities.

"Stan Winston’s effects shop created the giant puppets and we cast an actor to play the voice of the bug,” says Math. “We wanted the bugs to feel like they went to Meisner acting classes to perfect their performance but their one tragic flaw is that they are grossly unaware of the fact that they’re giant bugs.” Because the giant bugs are so overtly comedic in appearance, part of the challenge for Math and his DP Patrick Mcgowan was creating a world that was completely straight. “We didn’t want to use traditional broad and bright comedy lighting,” says the director. “After all, the comedy is subversive and a little dark.”

The DP shot the two spots entirely on location in Pasadena, CA over three days. “I shot with an ARRI LT using Cooke S4 lenses and the new Tungsten 500 ASA 5219 Vision 3 stock,” he reports. “We wanted to keep the lighting very unobtrusive and keep it all ‘soft pushes,’ with very little hard light. Zach wanted the actors to be lit in as soft and naturalistic way as possible, and one spot takes place in the morning and the other around dinner-time when most sunlight has gone.”

For the first spot with the man meeting the termite at the door, the DP used ARRI X Flatheads. “They’re a fairly new, very low profile light and let me get a lot of volume of light,” he says. “So we used 4Ks and 6Ks. Before, I’d have used 6K Pars and softened them down, but they have very long legs so when you’re shooting practical locations, it’s just very tough. You’re generally shoving them in the corner and trying to stick some diffusion in front of them, so they just become impractical. But you can stick the ARRIs Xs just two feet away in a corner, and that’s huge on a location.”

For the upstairs room, the DP used just one ARRI X 4K. “Then I’d augment that with some Kino Flos. I had one in the closet and another in the bathroom sink. Then downstairs I used a big soft source. Generally I’d just use one soft push and let the walls pick up the bounce and fill in the shadows. The trick with the soft stuff is to control all the bounce and spill.”

For exterior shots the DP used an 18K ARRI fresnel, “and most of the time I used it hard,” he adds. “I’d put it on full flood and just let it go without any diffusion.” Mcgowan’s rationale? “While I wanted the lighting to be very naturalistic, I also wanted it to have a certain heightened naturalism. I didn’t want it to be obtrusive, but I wanted to give it a certain style. After all, the Orkin man is meant to be this tall, strong figure, so the lighting is a little exaggerated.”

DP Flint Ellsworth — who got all the lights through his gaffer — didn’t even bother to carry any pars for the job. “That’s unusual, but I just didn’t need them,” he sums up. “What was great was that we shot the bugs all live. Zach didn’t want to use CG bugs, and that made a big difference. And any visual effects work was just rig removal. So the combination of live puppets and the way we lit them got the maximum amount of humor out of the spots.” 

CONTACTS

ARRI
www.arri.com 

Cooke Optics
www.cookeoptics.com

Kino Flo
www.kinoflo.com