1960s WORK
0126 Gallahers Commercials
I thoroughly enjoyed making commercials at Gallahers. Or at least that it is watching commercials being made, and adding the odd ‘creative’ comment myself. Of course the producer was hired by the agency, and its own television people controlled him directly.
Before we found out that Condor smokers were not as conservative we thought, we made one commercial with a leading actor who was also a well-known pipe-smoker. All he did, and all we thought we could show him doing, was enjoy a pipe full of tobacco. It was the first time I used a professional actor and he was a joy to direct.
After that we realised we had to be much more aggressive and much more proactive about expanding our marketplace. Accordingly we went for the theme that the pipe smoker was very discriminating. This later transposed into the famous line 'Ah Condor' and then -- after my time -- 'The Condor Moment'. This theme lasted for literally decades afterwards, and it became one of the longest lasting advertising campaigns ever!
The first commercial demonstrated this by showing a wrestling match in which one of the contestants was thrown out of the ring. He landed on the audience. All the while, though, the Condor pipe smoker carried on smoking without even noticing what was happening next to him.
The first, major, problem was the scene when we arrived early in the morning. The producers had carried out a recce at night and had chosen Walthamstow baths - where wrestling matches were regularly held – as the ideal location. Unfortunately they had not noticed that it had a glass roof. As we were shooting in daylight, this was a problem since the shot was supposed to show a darkened hall where the night-time wrestling match was taking place. It looked as if we would have to cancel the shoot, until I saw the director discreetly negotiating with the scaffolders from the adjoining building site. Within a few minutes the scaffolders were on strike and were crawling all over the glass roof of the baths covering it with tarpaulins from the building site. Within half an hour we were inside, in suitable darkness, ready for the shoot.
The wrestler, when he flew out of the ring, was caught by a row of stunt people - with a young girl immediately underneath the falling wrestler. Their chairs had been partially sawn through, so they suddenly collapsed and they all fell back onto the floor. I said to the stunt girl “You must be very skilful not to hurt yourself” to which she replied “I don't do anything clever. I just catch him and fall back. I am bruised all over. It hurts like hell. But I get paid for it!”
The next commercial featured motocross, motorbikes racing on a cross-country circuit. To film this we went out into the middle of Suffolk, to the British team’s test area. It was exciting stuff especially as we used members from the British team in the commercial. This time our single stuntman simply failed to turn up, so there was more negotiation and one of the British team agreed to fall off in front of the cameras. He was well-paid, but as he again pointed out, the only thing he could actually do was really fall off - at speed. This was bad enough in terms of the bruising himself, but the English team were going off to the European championships following day! Fortunately, the falls he had to make, for the director inevitably demanded a number of retakes, didn’t hold him back in the championship!
The biggest problem, however, came about in the key shot. Thus, as the bike went round the corner, it was supposed to throw up a dense cloud of dust, which covered the crowd: leaving the Condor smoker happily puffing on this pipe. We eventually got the shot we wanted, the crowd and the camera were covered in dust. The ensuing problem, however, was that the camera didn't like this and ground to a halt. That was the end of filming for the time being.
I never quite understood why film crews have to have all sorts of extras on hand, especially people, to cater for any emergency, but only ever hire one camera. In those days it was usually the 35mm Mitchell, and was expensive to hire -- but it was a lot less expensive than throwing away a whole day's shoot. In another shoot - for Condor Ready Rubbed, later on - we thought that the camera was making a lot of noise even through the soundproof blimp. This was designed to keep the noise away from the soundstage. We only found out later, when we came to look at the rushes, that the whole day's shoot had actually been shredded inside the camera and we had to be shoot everything again!
In a case of the motocross commercial, the big problem was that we were in the middle of Suffolk; a couple of hours away from getting a replacement camera. So, in those days before we had mobile phones, we would have had to wait four hours at least for the replacement - and by then it would be dark. Instead the cameraman took the camera completely apart and washed all the parts in petrol. He took something like three hours to do all this and reassemble it; but it was still slightly quicker than sending for the replacement. We then had to finish the shoot using handheld sun lamps, since it was already dusk.
The other thing that amazed me at that location shoot was that all the comforts of home travelled with us. The several dozen extras came by luxury coach but – more amazing to me - along with them came a complete kitchen to cook their lunch!
hits