I confess, I didn’t know perfume for dogs was a real thing until I made this ad, so if any retailer needs a ready-made, abstract, arty commercial this week’s 52 Sellout is for you!
It’s been a busy week here at RobPRocks HQ and I wanted to keep my weekly streak of 52 Sellout posts alive so I needed something I could shoot locally and a music track with a stripped-down arrangement. I had a piece of music I’d been playing with after finding the melody in an old voice memo on my phone (my voice memo app is an unending scroll of snippets of music and lyrics). It reminded me of a nocturne and I figured if I matched the music with some night photography it could look like one of those art film-looking fragrance ads.
A few weeks ago I recorded some good night footage from in front of the Brooklyn Public Library when I was testing a camera stabilizer so I thought about using that, but there were no people in it, which wouldn’t really work for the kind of perfume ad I had in mind. Then I remembered I had some really fun footage of a dog playing in the fountain at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It was a First Saturday, which is a monthly free event at the museum, and I went over to practice some night shooting. I heard some kids squealing with delight over by the fountain and when I looked in their direction I saw the happiest dog in the world playing in the dancing water.
I love dogs, especially happy dogs that are trying to bite moving water, so I got as much footage of the guy as I could. I wasn’t planning on using it for anything, I just wanted the save the moment. I thought it would be nice to look at on stressful days. But how to use images of a dog in a fountain for an arty perfume ad? Boom: dog perfume.
It seemed so ridiculous I ran with it, not knowing that it’s an absolute real thing (though “dog deodorant” is probably more accurate).
