"[Because of the resistance to the video photography,] the clip’s imagery was treated with Filmlook, a Kinescope-type transfer process. First, 4MC in Burbank digitized the video footage and output it to film. We then re-transfered that to video and recolorized it in telecine at 525 Post in Hollywood. To me, making video look like film is like making wood-grained paneling. But I have to say that Filmlook can be interesting in and of itself, even though it really doesn’t look like film. If you accept it as polyester, you can get into it, and nowadays even the big designers use polyester!"
In the realm of commercials, Casale has injected his postmodernist leanings into populist art, particularly in his advertisements for high-end corporate clients such as Miller Lite and Unicare. He explains, "What was once radical and what no one in commercials in their right mind would have ever gotten near has, over time, become mainstream and hip, so it’s not threatening anymore. We live in a world in which de-evolution has caught up with everyone, so what used to seem shocking, in bad taste and creepy is now met with ’Oh yeah!’"
Casale’s recent 30-second Miller Lite spot "Kevin" illustrates the point. The ad is composed of three short vignettes which contrast its somber, self-sacrificing title character with pictures of pleasure-seekers: in a blue-hued airport cocktail lounge, a hostess boogies atop the bar as onlookers engage in debauchery; nuclear scientists do the limbo on a bright beach adjacent to their power plant; and in a Europop club called Der Circus, dancers gyrate spasmodically against a deep blue background, in a style reminiscent of comedian Mike Myers’ infamous "Sprockets" skit on Saturday Night Live.
Throughout the spot, a tiny inset image of Kevin, sitting silently in an empty, fluorescent-lit room, remains in the screen’s lower-right-hand corner. "The challenge of the Miller Lite campaign was that their people wanted something that looked 30 years old almost like Technicolor. To get that look, we decided to overexpose a slow 35mm Kodak stock like 5248 or 93, get a low-con print made and then go to telecine, where we would pump up the contrast and saturate the colors. We ended up with something that looks so real it’s surreal."
Casale recently completed a series of 30-second spots for the healthcare company UniCare which mock the burgeoning genre of reality-based TV shows, such as America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries. In "Re-enactment," the host’s voice-over describes a man being referred to a physician of his choice, as the images show him at home calling for an appointment and entering the doctor’s office. These segments were respectively shot in blue and amber tones. A second spot, "Rarity," mimics the fuzzy black-and-white photography of a video surveillance camera as a woman in a mall praises the benefits of her health plan. Both of the UniCare ads are bookended with on-set shots of an a monotone-voiced announcer backed by the faux show title Medical Miracles. "Todd Gary and his partner Chuck over at Rubin Postair had me in mind because they wanted to steal the visual language of tabloid TV and reality-based TV shows, and do it in a way that people would both accept and laugh at. It’s the good/bad aesthetic where the high meets the low.
"What we are dealing with in the commercial world is the kind of reality presented by [Pop Art painter and sculptor] Jeff Koontz what he’s gotten away with in fine art is very liberating and very healthy. I respect that, and it’s not as easy as it looks. A lot of people might make things too cutesy or impose too much style because they refuse to let themselves make ’bad’ compositions or go for art direction that they don’t want to be associated with. If you watch reality-based shows, the host doesn’t end up in the center of the frame, and he often does turn his head in a really stilted manner. And when actors are used for re-enactments, those shows always get better-looking people than the real people."
This fall, Casale plans to direct the feature film Samson, a quirky romantic comedy about a washed-up rock ’n’ roll star on the verge of a comeback. One would expect a motion picture from a member of Devo to be rife with pop art and technical wizardry, but Casale maintains that he’ll be striving for a slightly stylized visual simplicity. "You can make a film look as good as Trainspotting even if it’s reality-based," he says. "Samson is going to be a very intelligent, well-made, low-budget film with good processing. There won’t be room for tricks."
