A mere six months into his directing career, 29-year-old Belgian Xavier Mairesse has quite the rap sheet.

Since moving from working as an assistant DP on feature films such as Battlefield Earth and The Whole Nine Yards, Mairesse has shot humorous spots for Skoda, Belgian newspaper Blik, Durex, and The European Community promoting the new Euro, in addition to his debut effort "Ghost," a demure PSA promoting safe driving, which will be screened at the 2002 Cannes Festival, all through Belgium's Key Line Films.

"Ghost" is a stylish and simple spot driving home the importance of buckling up. It opens with an off-center shot of a tree that is violently shaken. We then see a car wrapped around the tree, the three occupants presumably dead. As the choral soundtrack begins, the driver and backseat passenger's iridescent green spirits leave their bodies and dart towards the heavens. The front seat passenger's ghost, tries to leave the mortal world, but struggles with the seat belt. Suddenly, he gasps back to life while the cut line "Heaven Can Wait; Belt Up" appears.

The spot was shot on 16mm film, but Mairesse says he tested the logistics of the spot with a mini DV camera first. With more than 24 layers in some shots, he opted to use a stationery camera as no amount of motion control could ensure that each layer matched up with others.

"I like to do different things that are difficult, but don't have the feeling that they were hard," he says of his process.

In order to have the passengers' bodies float skyward, Mairesse filmed the actors hanging in rigs from the tree. For the car-tree impact, falling leaves were created in 3D, and tree movement was achieved through camera movement and a couple of crew members jumping up in the tree. Post-production was done in-house.

The heavens were on side for Mairesse's freshman outing - within five minutes of wrapping, the skies opened up with a thunderous display of rain. What luck.

Webfiles:
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