Sam Walker Kick-Starts 2014 with Virgin Active

You've eaten your fill of turkey, you've imbibed more than your fair share of alcohol and you're now filled with more cheese than a Michael Buble album: it's time to get fit.

January is when consumers are bombarded with healthy-living messages; stop smoking, stop drinking, start exercising, and the usual approach is being shown other people with far more will power, stamina and abs than you.

But Virgin Active has taken a different approach, one that doesn't chime with the usual fitness fascism but which shows a half-naked man on a motorbike in the desert. Yes you read that right.

The commercial, called A Clear Horizon, comes from Karmarama and was created and directed by Sam Walker who, below, explains the inception of the idea, how it was put together and why street-casting can be a wonderful thing.

Tell us a little bit about the brief from the client and the idea behind A Clear Horizon.

We wanted to make Virgin Active stand for something more than just being a health club. The idea was to show someone living life how he wanted without fear or regret. Not just active but positive in every way.

Originally we planned to shoot lots of different scenes but then the idea solidified into one primary scene that needed to carry the whole film, and that scene turned out to be a man in his pants driving at high speed through the desert.

This is the time of year where gym and fitness campaigns are all around us; did you want to make this purposely different to cut through that clutter?

Yes, health clubs and gyms generally advertise in a particular way so we tried to go against the expected right from the start. There are other parts of the campaign that talk about the product benefits of VA but this film was all about emotion and a feeling.

The usual thing would have been to do lots of bland models doing exercise to a pumping track and not much else. We were lucky that the client wanted to do something that engaged the audience on a more emotional rather than rational level, which hopefully we've done.

Where did you find the main character?

We were actually struggling to find our hero but when we landed in Cape Town there happened to be the year's biggest biker rally on, so we headed down and started street casting.

It's an strange event where thousands of bikers from all over the country, many of them Hell's Angels, come together to donate cuddly toys to children in need. We found our guy running a t-shirt company. It has to be the oddest place I've ever found a cast member.

Was it hard to get the right person and did you immediately know this guy would be ‘the guy’?

It was surprisingly difficult. I originally wanted to cast a stuntman who looked the part but a lot of the SA stuntman were booked up on various feature films and the ones we had didn't have the presence I was looking for. Our hero had to be not cheesy, confident, the older end for a stuntman, with a beard, and a face that looked like he had lived.

When I saw our man I immediately thought he looked the part but was still concerned he wouldn't be able to ride to the level we needed him to. I asked him how he would feel riding at high speed through the desert on a bike in only his pants. Without hesitation he said he'd love to and with that we knew we had our man.

We still cast a stunt double because we couldn't afford to get to the middle of nowhere and find out that our man couldn't do what he said he could. In the end he was brilliant and did all but one shot himself.

Where was the spot shot?

We shot literally miles from anywhere in a place called Calvinia about eight hours drive from Cape Town. It was perfect for what we needed and didn't look like one of those flawless mud flats you get in car and perfume commercials. Our mud flat looked more like a real place and the driving surface was also good, with a few bumps that you can feel on camera.

There’s a lot of stock footage in the spot too; how did you find exactly what you were looking for?

We had a team of researchers and our agency producer, Emma [Johnston], basically didn't sleep for a week. The problem with stock footage is that a lot of it is shit and looks like the kind of soulless footage you'd expect to find in a sanitary towel commercial.

Everything we used had to have a certain quality, something interesting about it, and had to feature forward motion, change, positive action or activity, which when edited together created a feeling of momentum. We briefed in lots and lots of ideas to the researchers because with stock you never know if it's going to work until you see it.

You directed the spot as well as being one of the creatives; does being both make it harder or easier?

It makes it easier in that you just have your own singular vision to try and create. I'm lucky in that I have my creative partner Joe [de Souza] to sound things off, to collaborate with, and also for sanity checks. The downside is that there's nowhere to hide if things aren't going quite right. But we kind of prefer it that way.

Is directing something you want to continue with?

Yes, definitely, although I'm still enjoying the day job as well at the moment so I'm not in any hurry to make the leap permanently just yet. It's nice for me to be able to direct the right projects as and when they come up. Not everything we write I want to direct but this one I was really keen to do.

What was the hardest part of the project?

We didn't have enough money or time which always poses problems but sometimes it makes you more resourceful and singleminded. The shoot was actually quite dangerous because firstly we were shooting with a man who sold t-shirts rather than a professional stuntman, and if he had come off going the speeds we were going wearing essentially nothing he would have been in serious trouble. And so would I.

The closest we came to disaster was, ironically, when our stuntman rather than our actor was doing one of his shots. He hit a big bump going full-speed, flew up in the air and very nearly came off. Frankly, looking back at the footage, it's a miracle he didn't. He said that it was of the closest he'd come to a serious accident in 28 years of being a stuntman.

What’s your New Year’s resolution for 2014?

To try and do the best work we can. And not kill any stuntmen.