Credits:
Titles: Robot Friend, Monkeys, Deer Lickin, Karate Chop
Client: General Mills/Pillsbury Pizza Pops
Agency: Cossette Communications, Toronto
Creative Directors: Peter Breton, Dave Douglass
Art Director: Colin Brown
Copywriter: Tom Greco
Producer: Leanne McLellan
Production Company: Holiday Films, Toronto
Director: Scott Corbett
Executive Producer: Josefina Nadurata
Producer: Gillian Gardner
Director of Photography: Jeff Venditti
Editorial: David Baxter, Panic & Bob, Toronto
Music and Sound Design: Rocco Gagliese, Eggplant, Toronto
Visual Effects: Andrew Hobbs, Amigo, Toronto
Q&A with Holiday Films director Scott Corbett on Pizza Pops:
What was the creative brief from the agency?
These were great scripts, so the main thing was to make them as funny and memorable as they could possibly be and not screw them up in all the obvious ways they could easily be screwed up.
What did you like about this project? What attracted you to this job?
When I read the first script with a distraught boy cradling the head of a robot in his lap as it sputters its last words, I immediately called my EP and asked her what we had to do to get the job.
What did you bring to this project creatively?
Tom and Colin, the creatives on the project, are fiercely committed to doing great work, and at the same time are incredibly collaborative and open to ideas. You can't ask for more than that. I think like most of my projects it begins with a feeling or tone. I try to push everything in the direction of that. Most of the locations were pretty nondescript as boarded so that really opened it up and contributed a lot to the overall tone; most notably the trailer location for "Karate Chop" and the atomic age feel I envisioned for "Robot Friend."
Robots, little people, a monkey and exploding goo. Do you have any interesting stories to tell me about them on the shoot day? Or issues you faced during pre-production?
Designing and building the robot was fun but challenging. We wanted it to have a personality and a vintage, built-from-found-objects feel. The kind a kid might build today with a nod to that era. To see it perform and interact with our actor on the set was kinda trippy and surreal. And of course whenever you shoot with animals or robots, there's always some trepidation about whether they will do what you need them to do on the day of the shoot. Fortunately for us, they did. Although the robot did get a bit temperamental at one point.
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