For director John Zissimos, it sounded like a fun job — create a four-minute viral video for Alpo that made a virtue of the pet food’s downmarket reputation, gently mocking high-end pet-pampering facilities like the dog-focused D Pet Hotels of Hollywood, or the upscale boutique Fifi & Romeo, where Paris Hilton shops for her pet gear. As a bonus, the budget was tiny enough that nobody would be stressed out about the project, giving him a little room to breathe. The catch? He didn’t exactly have enough money to hire a full crew. That meant working as his own DP and camera operator, pitching in on editorial tasks — and even singing a little song to help pull the final cut together. F&V asked him about doing the gruntwork on the whirlwind one-day shoot.

FILM & VIDEO: So how did this project start? Did someone come to you with the idea?

John Zissimos: Yeah. It was just a piece of paper, but it was a gem of an idea, this Alpo thing where dogs are being incredibly pampered and it’s time to just give ’em some regular dog food and let ’em chase sticks and get out there and be regular dogs again. They wanted to get a van and a couple of people and go hand out Alpo, but I thought the idea was bigger than what they had. I wrote this brainstorm treatment, eight pages or so, and sent it back to them. They were all over it.

Alpo said, we’ll give you a couple of bucks to do this if you can pull it off. What’s great was, they didn’t care. It wasn’t enough money that it would really bother them if it didn’t happen. And the agency needed somebody who would really come in and own it and put everything they had into it.

How did you end up operating the camera yourself?

There was no money to bring a lot of people in, so I had to shoot the thing or it wasn’t gong to get done. I actually rented a Steadicam. I had never used one before, but I’d hired dozens of Steadicam operators and all I could think was, ‘How difficult can it be?’ On the shoot day, within an hour and a half, I was almost as tired as I’ve ever been in my life, and I still had about 12 hours to shoot. It was brutal. I have so much respect now for the guys who do that. I took it off for lunch, but I wore it all day — and the next day I was in real serious pain.

I would have been thinking about what I could pick up handheld!

The piece would have come out really nauseating if I went handheld because of all the running around I wanted to do. For some shots, I would just sit in this really cheap wheelchair and the grips would shoot me down the street as I held the Steadicam and hope that I didn’t wipe out. They were really cool sports. It was like old-school shooting back in college, when we’d get a guerilla crew and everybody would have a good time.

What kind of camera were you shooting with?

We had the Panasonic HVX200 HD camera with P2 cards, and what a joy — instant on. You don’t have to wait for anything. Just hit that button and you’re off. A guy takes the cards out and pops new ones in. I got a drive that was really easy to load into the Avid when I started cutting. It was a cool way to shoot. I couldn’t have done this with film or with a bigger crew. I couldn’t have moved as fast, and a lot of what I was doing was coming up with everything on the spot. When we’d walk into a place, nobody knew what was going to happen. I had a plan in my back pocket of what I wanted to get, but I didn’t tell the two actors anything. I would ask a lot of questions from behind camera. I kept myself as kind of the bad guy and let the two actors take it in and help me get from place to place.

In the past, have you operated your own camera?

Only once, when I did this whole Mike’s Hard Lemonade campaign. [It featured a talking Mike’s Hard Lemonade bottle on the left side of the frame. -Ed.] I had a simple contraption — kind of a belt with a spring-loaded thing that went into the belt. That attached to the camera, and there was a thing that went around my shoulder. It was kind of jerky, but it was the only way I could puppeteer the bottle in front of it. With a Steadicam I couldn’t get around in front of the bottle. I did that campaign for a couple of years and it wasn’t exhausting in any way. I thought the Steadicam would be easier, but it was way harder.

Was it difficult to get permission to shoot at places like the pet hotel?

I dropped in [in advance], I met the people, and I told them what we were doing in broad strokes. I didn’t say, “We’re going to come in and lampoon you.” But I would go in and complement the place, how great it is. You’ve got to understand, these people are really into dogs. They love them. They think what they’re doing is beautiful. There’s no amount of making fun of them that they’re going to be offended by. They didn’t care what we did and what we said as long as they were OK with the product. One place was like, “Well, I don’t serve Alpo here — we have only these very special dog products — so I’m not going to sell Alpo. I like your idea but I’m not going to let you shoot here.” That’s the only time somebody said "no" to us, and I actually thought it was noble of that person. So that happens.

Was this a one-day shoot?

One really long day. We got up at the crack of dawn and started at a dog park. A lot of that didn’t make it in, but the idea was they would go to this humongous dog park in L.A. and find there were no dogs there. We’d go find the dogs at the chi chi salons and the pet bakeries and all these places. I put that stuff into the original cut, which was 8 and a half minutes long, but [the client] felt that slowed it down a little bit at the beginning.

You worked on the edit too, right?

For a week I cut by myself at home, and I uploaded cuts to the agency in Minneapolis. They loved the cut and gave me a couple of comments, and then I flew to Minneapolis and cut with them for another week. We were going to transfer everything over to the in-house editor and work together, but we got sidetracked by the need to get a 60-second version out [for exposure on Hulu.com]. I started cutting that while the in-house editor took the longer cut I had brought in and started cutting it down.

It worked out because I stayed out of the internal politics of how this cut got put together between the creatives and the account people. I stayed out of that process, and that was best. In the end it was exactly what they wanted. And I was happy enough to be involved in the edit for two weeks. Generally that doesn’t happen. If they’ve hired a real pro editor, he doesn’t want the director cutting along with him. And if somebody has a really good comedy editor, it’s going to come out great. I actually love working with an editor. If I can, I don’t like cutting my own stuff because they give you a different perspective. They find things you didn’t know you had, and they make it better.

Just having another set of eyes on it brings out things you can’t see because you’re so close to the footage.

The key to getting people to do good work is the difference between confidence and arrogance. Especially in advertising, people mistake arrogance for confidence all the time. If somebody says, “It has to be this way,” it’s not confidence. It’s arrogance to not let anyone else have an opinion. People see that arrogance and think, “Oh, he’s confident. He’s really sure of himself so I’m going to go with that.” But that’s always a bad sign, and it ruins things in the long run. Having confidence and letting everyone else you’ve hired in this collaborative process bring their ideas to you and say, that’s a better idea. you are right. that’s confidence. You see arrogance all the time, and you see a lot of agencies go out of business and directors not make it because they’re going on arrogance, not confidence. I go into every project knowing one thing — I don’t know anything. I love taking in all those opinions.

Everybody does a better job if they feel valued. They’re not working for a dictator who thinks he can run a Steadicam and knows everything about everything.

[Laughs.] It was really funny with the Steadicam. I made fun of myself all day. But I’ll tell you — people saw me struggling and working and sweating like a pig. I looked around and nobody was sitting still. Everyone was running all day. It was so exciting to watch these people running around like nuts. Even the agency people, the account execs, they were all working. They were running around! It was really something. Without those people, you’re not going to get anything done. It’s only going to be as good as they are.

One more thing — where did the song come from?

I didn’t have anything to cut with! I bought a bunch of stock online and nothing was working. I was walking around on the weekend with my wife and I realized, “I think I’m going to have to write something!” I just whipped out the guitar. I took a big risk and took a day to write out a really silly song and record it in Pro Tools at home. I had no idea whether they were going to like it, plus I blew a whole day I should have been editing. They all laughed hysterically at the song, so that worked. But that was a big deal to me — having something great to cut to. And you realize that video or film is only half of what’s going on. If you have a powerful track, that takes you to a great place.

So that’s you singing. Is that your first recorded output or have you done that before?

I’ve never recorded a song at home like that! I did stuff 15 years ago, fooling around. But it’s been a long time since I pulled out the guitar and tried to do something. The adrenaline got me through. If I were to sit down and try to do that again today, I don’t know if I could. But the adrenaline and the deadline and working for two days and not getting someplace good put a rush into me that made me able to do that. I think about that, and I don’t even know how I managed to get that done. But I was energized — and I was so exhausted when it was over.

For more information: www.zissimos.com

Credits

Client: Purina’s ALPO Brand Dog Food
Campaign Title: "Quick, get that dog some ALPO"
Agency: Fallon Minneapolis
Executive Creative Director: Al Kelly
Group Creative Director: Duane Johnson
Art Director: Dean Hanson
Copywriter: Dean Buckhorn
Director of Integrated Production: Vic Palumbo
Producer: Erin Glaus

Production Company: Fools and Horses
Director: John Zissimos
Director of Photography: John Zissimos
Executive Producer: Shelly Townsend/Cyn Guzman
Producer: Denny Kennedy
Editorial: Fallon Assembly Line/Fools and Horses
Editor: Jesse Thompson/John Zissimos