Space Coke

Format: 16 mm
Length: 1:58 min.
Completed: 6 June 2003
Budget: $250.00

Log line
A Coke Commercial: A coked up astronaut drops his coke from space and crash lands to retrieve it but a damn dirty ape shook it all up.

Blog

Pre-Production
This was for my "Image Design" class at Columbia College. We got two rolls of film to shoot a silent advert for one 'client' from a list of companies. I chose Coca-Cola because it was going to be a challenge doing something that has been done a million times before. I scored a couple free extra rolls from another teacher.

At the time I was watching all of Stanely Kubrick's films. So naturally 2001: A Space Odyssey was on my mind, especially the opening with the monkeys. The twist was I added Planet of the Apes Charlton - style space man. The basic story is really simple: space man drops coke, crash lands to pick it up, monkey picks up coke and shakes it up, spaceman finds coke and tries to drink it but it explodes in his face from the monkey shaking it up. Pretty dumb but it became much more interesting to view it out of order with the images of the monkey and the man mirroring each other and becoming sort of an homage to the themes of 2001 and Planet of The Apes.

Production
The budget was spent on the $180.00 monkey suit (a wise investment), and the gas and food to get my crew (friends) out to the Indiana Dunes for a day. I made the Space Suit out of Foam and Ductape, the helmet was a fishbowl I borrowed from a neighbor. I added American Flags, and NRA logos to the space suit, but they were too small to register on any of the shots. Trying to capture a coke bottle flying up in the air in slow-motion with a Bolex is near impossible. but all the effects had to be done in camera. The opening forced perspective shot came out quiet nicely, though.

Post-Production
I remember struggling with the edit because I had so much hilarious footage of Brian acting like a monkey and doing a great Charlton Heston face. When Brian came over to watch the cut it was about three minutes long. He suggested I cut the picture to Richard Strauss's Sprach Zarathustra. I usually make my own music for my films but this was just too perfect of a fit, plus it drove the nail in the coffin of the homage to 2001.