Old McDonald Had a Foe
Trevor Cornish has paired up with TBWA/Paris to create a witty spot promoting the new McFarmer and McTimber sandwiches at McDonalds. Shot in California over two days, the classic soundtrack “Eye of the Tiger” guides these two foes in their rigorous training to compete in brute force for the ultimate reward.
Using the everyday chores of an average logger and farmer, larger-than-life weight lifting and cardio regiments become the workout plans for these two enemies. The farmer is depicted skipping rope with barbed wire, and weight training with full-sized hay bails and a tractor with the swather attached. The logger practices his sparring with a grizzly bear, rows with an enormous saw in each hand to cut down numerous trees at once, and uses boulders to tone his muscles. After the intense workouts, each rival indulges himself with his respective sandwich.
Reflecting on the shoot, Cornish described it as challenging as every scene was its own large, in-camera stunt. The remote locations, large cranes, and real wildlife made for a lot of prep and planning, but in the end it all came together as envisioned.
Trevor Cornish plays with fire, dust, and Visa
View Trevor’s VISA HERE
Trevor Cornish finishes his latest ad for VISA. (Hamsterpub / Saatchi & Saatchi PARIS)
Q: What was your first instinctive approach to a project of this magnitude/detail?
TC: Push it all the way. It was an idea that was so good and big on paper, but I’ve seen ideas like this fall flat before either because of client/agency hesitations, worry about reactions or just not wanting to commit to the full potential of the idea. We talked about that a lot during the pitch and thankfully the client was wonderful and really wanted this spot to be as big as we did.
Q: What did you foresee as possible problems/challenges and how did you overcome them?
TC: Money versus reality. Like all budgets these days, there were challenges to make this spot as big as we wanted it to be. We needed to destroy a large hardware/decor store, which is no small task, and and unfortunately Home Depot or Rona were not about to let us in and do this. So we had to build this place from nothing just so we could wreck it. We worked really hard with our production designer, Francois Jordaan, to design the set as big as we needed it to be while at the same time leaving room for flexibility and the ability to do quick clean ups. This took a lot of meetings and reworking the plan over and over again, but in the end we got everything we wanted.
Q: We’re there any key production hurdles throughout the shoot?
TC: Water and dust. These two elements made finding a location in which to build this set next to impossible. And we couldn’t just go in to a studio because we wanted to feel windows as well as the ceiling at some points. We found a few places that were willing to let us, but once we looked at structural issues we realized the building would leak and we’d destroy it. After exhausting every resource our locations manager finally found a place that met all our needs, but water from the sprinklers were still a constant issue. And once we mixed the dust in there it was just a big mud pit. It took a lot of work from all departments to deal with this nasty mixture and I’m sure they are still cleaning it off some of the equipment.
Q: What was the most fun moment for you during the shoot?
TC: Blowing stuff up is always the most fun and we had several opportunities to do that on this shoot. The timing and choreography is always so intense. You rehearse and rehearse, but in the end you’ve got one crack at it or a very, very long reset. The biggest one was after the bags of cement explode open and a big wall of dust basically fills the store, almost chasing the customers out. This cloud was going to cover the whole place and resetting was not really an option. We had two cameras, one placed directly in the line of fire and another on the dolly which we moved with the direction of the explosion to see it blast around the corner of the aisles as the customers went running. In the end it all worked great and we got it in one take, but just before calling action you could’ve cut the tension with a knife. Good fun.
View Trevor Cornish’s REEL HERE
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