"Over Here" opens with Andrew, a typical office guy taking a time-lapsed stroll down a modern, glass-walled hallway when the realization of a forgotten meeting - tempered with a voiceover ("...and don't forget your 10 o'clock meeting") and a cut away to his hands going over a notebook - comes to mind. He checks his watch and an elevator button flashing at 10 drives his lateness home. Alarmed, he makes his way to the glassed-in office of fellow employee Sean Mercer, who has just answered the phone. Oblivious to Sean's ongoing conversation, he blurts out, "Josh says you have a fast car. If it's fast, I need to borrow it. I have this meeting to get to or I am dead." Sean points to the phone, indicating he is occupied. Nonplussed, our hero stares at him expectantly; while Sean describes his Staedtler protractor over the phone, the annoying fellow whispers, "Can I borrow your car?" An overhead shot of Sean's key's illuminates the battle of wits between the two office drones. Sean adjusts the keys as Andrew looks on, evoking a nervous Billy Crystal. Their confrontation is shot in profile through Sean's glass-walled office, their bureaucratic conflict unnoticed by a passing mail clerk. Sean consents and slides over the keys, and, as the late fellow runs off, Sean knowingly writes P4, the location of the car, on a piece of paper, looks away and holds it up when the guy returns to ascertain the car's locations. Accelerated elevator buttons count down to P4 and the doors slide open. We linger on a shot of Andrew's face and then see him running out into the garage. He spies a speedy-looking vehicle and uses the keyless remote, only to be confused when the car before him lays silent. Little does he realize, Sean's car is the New Beetle Turbo S, the lights of which flash behind him in silence as he looks at the car in front of him with exasperation.

The entire piece is scored with a minimalist, diffused synth track with chunky beats that pause to illustrate the late guy's impatience; the track was done by Scientific American (a.k.a. Andy Rohrman). Art director Don Shelford and copywriter Dana Satterwhite describe the spot's inception.

"The Beetle is not traditionally a fast car. The only real hook we could find was that you could have this fast car but no one suspects it is fast," says Shelford. "We showed the car in the parking garage because we were legally handcuffed, as you can only show cars going at 55 MPH. Actually showing what the car does is illegal and the networks won't run it. So we let the story build up without having the car prominent."

The role of Sean Mercer was played by a friend of Loubek's by the name of Sean Mercer. Mercer was not an actor, so the creatives and director went to great lengths to keep him distracted while the late guy waits.

"I was on the other end of the phone about a hundred yards away, hitting him with a barrage of information, throwing stuff at him and making him respond," says Satterwhite. Loubek elaborates: "Dana got on the phone asking questions that ranged in their degree of obtuseness and confusion. It was important that he couldn't be in a situation that was comfortable enough to put the phone down to explain where his car is."

The entire spot is riddled with random humor, a generic office flavor and fast cutaways to symbolic numbers and characters, courtesy of Bug Editorial's Andre Betz. Loubek says steps such as showing an elevator button instead of a clock or the aerial shot of the keys abstract what the creatives and director intended to come across as a very realistic series of events.

"I thought the wide, standoff shot of them in profile starring at each other with the camera straight on was a very funny shot. The spot is about a series of successes and failures for our annoying anti-hero," says Loubek. "As for the aesthetic, generic is a good word. We were going for a contemporary version of an aerospace engineering kind of look. These guys were structural engineers for an information age company. We didn't shoot your average point of view on the key shot; the direct overhead shot fit with the mood of the 10 elevator button. The angles throughout were pretty hard, in keeping with the aerospace idea. Graph paper with tiny squares became our structure."

CREDITS:

Group Creative Director: Alan Pafenbach
Agency Producer: Amy Favat
Production Company: HKM Productions
Producer: Tom O'Malley
Telecine: Riot! Manhattan
Colorist: Billy Gabor
Editing: Andre Betz, Bug Editorial, New York
Music: Scientific American
Recording: Carl Mandelbaum, The Anx

Webfiles:

Arnold Worldwide> http://www.arn.com
HKM> http://www.hkm.com
Volkswagen> http://www.vw.com