December 20, 2013
Trojans
Ambitious Student Commercial Selected as a Top 24 Semi-Finalist in 'Crash the Superbowl'
To see Dive please visit: http://tinyurl.com/doritosUSC
Student films are all about preparation. For every hour spent filming, double or triple the time is spent on location scouting, rehearsing and blocking before the shoot. USC Cinema student Shane Habberstad and recent alum Jack Heston ‘13 took this one step farther with their spec Doritos commercial Dive for the Doritos: Crash the Superbowl contest by filming multiple skydives to recreate a group of skydivers fighting for a bag of tortilla chips.
“I’ve been a skydiver since I was sixteen so the idea for Dive came from that,” said Habberstad. “Eight months ago, after I had studied last year’s winning commercials, I thought I could bring my background to the process and do something different. Something action packed. I had a loose framework for a group of skydivers chasing a bag of Doritos. We ended up working with an incredible group of talented people and Doritos changed their marketing concept to ‘for the bold’ and I knew we could do something special with that theme. We were going to do something no one had seen before.”
“Perris Valley was our first drop zone,” said Heston. “We storyboarded the whole thing and ended up doing fifteen-sixteen airplane loads for the shoot. We had to do one shot per jump - in free fall you only have about a minute to film so there were very unique challenges. USC prepared me for just about everything but this was a whole new level.”
Some of the notable cast members included:
Luke Aikins (The Pilot), Professional Skydiver/BASE Jumper, Red Bull Air Force
Roberta Mancino (girl who drops the Doritos), BASE Jumper/Wingsuit Pilot, International Model
Laura James (girl on the couch at the end), Model/Actress, Winner of America's Next Top Model Cycle 19
The winner of the contest receives one million dollars and has their commercial screened as part of the Superbowl on February 2nd.
To see a behind the scenes vignette, please visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNDhXZKodsc