The Project: A global Fanta spot

Ad Agency: Cliff Freeman & Partners, New York

Production Company: Public Works, Santa Monica

The Mandate: To find the right talent at the right price for a comedy/soccer-themed spot. Since Fanta is not sold in North America, a non-US location was also necessary.

The Solution: Freakish weather notwithstanding, Sao Paulo, Brazil's established production infrastructure and talent buyout lured Cliff Freeman & Partners from New York for the production of the Fanta spot "Knees."

The spot features a group of young boys playing soccer, watched by two girls. One boy hurts his knee and falls, and the girls put a cold Fanta on his knee to ease the pain. The other boys, noticing the attention the hurt boy is receiving, fall to the ground clutching their own legs in mock pain. Maresa Wickham, senior producer at Cliff Freeman, says Sao Paulo seemed the logical location.

"The whole story revolved around kids playing soccer, so we wanted to go to a location where kids play soccer, and the first ones that pop into my mind are Italy and Brazil," says Wickham. " In Italy, talent is very inexpensive, but the production is more expensive. In Brazil, we get such a good exchange rate with the rial that production is a good cost and talent is also a good buyout."

The agency opted to work with Roenberg (Espen Sandberg and Joachim Roenning), a Norwegian directing team represented by Public Works (a satellite of HKM Productions). Wickham says Public Works subcontracted the job out to Film Planet, a production/production services company with offices in Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and Lisbon. Film Planet's Sao Paulo office provides foreign productions with stages and access to crews and equipment. Karin Stuckenschmidt, executive producer at Film Planet Brazil, says the city is the center of Brazil's film and commercial production industry.

"There's a lot of equipment here, but what I tell people who come from LA or New York is it's not the same amount of rental places as you have up there," says Stuckenschmidt. "For this job, I had everything that was asked for. A camera I rented from Camera Dois, the dollies and a crane from two other places: Motion and Fabrica."

Scott Craig was the freelance line producer working on the project for Public Works.

"We were originally scheduled for two days of shooting, and we basically got to shoot four to five hours on the first day, then the rain came in," says Craig. "We had to wait two-and-a-half full days because we were shooting on a clay field, so there was a lot of mud."

While the crew waited out the rain, the Brazilian art department did its best to prepare the site for shooting, and Craig went to work on a fresh problem.

"I had to find a new director of photography because our DP [John Andersen] had to go back to Oslo for a shoot on Monday," says Craig. "I wasn't able to look for an American DP because they require more visas to enter Brazil than Europeans. So the directors, Joachim and Espen, got a hold of a DP they knew of in Norway named Nicholas Osborne."