New Commercials – U Pull & Pay

It was a busy winter, and among the several spots I’ve produced during what I feel is the ugliest of Mother Nature’s seasons (ever wonder why they call her “Mother”?), I thought I’d post a couple commercials that I produced for U Pull & Pay. Not only am I happy with the outcome, but producing these spots allowed me to remain indoors, during Frau Frostbite’s more inhospitable tantrums. (Translation: sub-zero weather and mountains of snow).

At first blush, you would think that U Pull & Pay is just another auto graveyard, but you’d be mistaken. This is not some local junk yard, piled high with tetanus inducing car sandwiches that sport pieces of jagged metal, and sit in chemical cesspools. This is a highly organized, efficient, award winning, and well maintained, self-serve used auto parts company, with nine locations across the United States. But that’s literarly just the half of it.

In addition to being able to find your auto parts online, and then walk into their yard to retrieve said parts, at a pretty reasonable price, you can also have your car… or more specifically, your junked car, hauled away. They even pay you for the privilege, based on the value of your unwanted vehicle. Yes. They pay you! Ah… the cycle of life.

They already had a great brand and design in place, so the challenge (and fun) of creating TV commercials for them, was to bring their existing style and attitude to life. We went with the gritty, stylized look they had established in their print pieces and on their website. Casting was simple, as there wouldn’t be any on camera dialogue. In fact, there would not be any on camera action, either. Everything would be shot in still frames, just short of stop-frame animation, including the mass of props we’d need to gather.

And when I say “mass of props,” I’m not exaggerating. It took a couple of trips to hardware stores, and tractor supply outlets, to get everything we needed, from crescent wrenches to towing hooks, screw drivers, crowbars, and even an old telephone. A total of some 50-plus items were assembled, in what I can honestly say is the largest prop list I’ve ever created. All of this, including the three male talents, would be composited and animated in After Effects.

Sound design was our next concern. The voice over needed to be male, blue collar, and ‘dead-pan’ in delivery. I always loved Hoyt Axton’s bass-baritone voice on the Busch Beer commercials back in the 80’s. It was the kind of voice style that I wanted for these commercials:  manly, wise, and matter-of-fact. This isn’t to say that women don’t pull parts, or need their junked cars carted away. I’m sure they do. In fact, I know they do. But remember, we’re matching the look and feel of an existing brand and going for a predominantly male audience.

Along with this voice over, we opted to forgo music, and instead, go with some sound-scaping, using accented effects to reinforce the imagery and action on screen. Gathering these effects was almost as time consuming as was the sourcing of props (though admittedly, far easier than running around to every farm/mechanic/contractor store in the area). Of all the sound effects, the most important is the sound of an engine firing up, at the end. It was the final accent that tied together the whole point of both spots; this is easy.

I’m pretty happy with the way both spots turned out. The process went smoothly, throughout, from concept approval, to production and post. Best of all, the client was happy with them, too. Have a look: