Eye On Ads: Shawn Michienzi Goes 'Six Feet Under'

Viewers of HBO's Six Feet Under were starting to think the funeral-home drama had become too serious for its own good. So Venables Bell & Partners, San Francisco helped to promote the show's DVD release with a print campaign featuring several death scenarios laced with dark comedy.

In the first ad, shot by Minneapolis-based Shawn Michienzi, an exuberant fellow fooling around on a trampoline is about to spring head-first into the fast-moving blades of a ceiling fan. In the second, a suburban dad is fixing a problem under his car, which is propped up with three cans of paint, one of which is starting to tip over.

The third execution leaves a bit more to the imagination, featuring a bathtub surrounded by enough haphazardly placed electrical appliances to poach a chicken. Beneath each vignette of senseless death is a tagline that entices the viewer to rent the Six Feet Under DVD: "May we recommend a more enjoyable way to get inside a funeral home?"

Creative director Greg Bell, who worked on the project with art director Paul Caiozzo and writer Paul Charney, says that the strategic challenge was to remind the public that the show still treats the subject of death with its signature quirky style. Michienzi, he says, was more than up to the challenge.

"I think Sean is the most well-rounded, photographic problem solver I know," Bell says. "Not only is he about the beauty of the image, but he can talk strategy. He can say, 'Here's what we're trying to do for the consumer.' He talks that language as though he works for an agency."

The photographic challenge, on the other hand, was to capture the trampoline man at exactly the right moment. VB&P cast stunt man Jimmy Waitman because of his derring-do trampoline skills (he had once been part of an Orlando-based trampoline show). Michienzi shot rolls of Waitman mid-air before the team realized the best way to depict his imminent decapitation was to show him at the bottom of the trampoline, just before he took flight.

"That's what we do," says Michienzi. "We try to catch that 100th of a second, and tell a story with that split second."

The campaign is currently running as billboards and outdoor panels in Los Angeles and New York. Print is running heavily through August in magazines such as Entertainment Weekly, The LA Times, The New York Times, People, Time Magazine, US Weekly and Vanity Fair.

www.ripsaw.net -- Shawn Michienzi's Studio

Creative Credits
Client: HBO
Agency: Venables Bell & Partners, San Francisco
Creative Director: Greg Bell
Art Director: Paul Caiozzo
Copywriter: Paul Charney
Photographer: Shawn Michienzi