Bob Collins
Photo: Brittany Tarrolly (bikini model 1) Erik Sudheimer (Guitar Player) Tiffany Tarrolly (Bikini model 2) Mike Pinter (Bass Player) Michael Yaremchuk (Co-director)
Some pictures just scream, “what’s the story here?”. This one qualifies.
Eric Sturm of Saint Paul sent it along today. His wife, Tanya, took it during filming of a commercial that is one of 30 finalists to be played during the Super Bowl. A contest, sponsored by Chevrolet, will determine the winner based on viewer votes.
Sturm says the commercial, the work of Sturm, Michael Yaremchuk and Erik Sudheimer, is the only finalist from Minnesota, and he concedes that some of his competition clearly came from profession ad agencies. “I think it’s like voting in a dictatorship, where everybody gets a vote, but the winner is determined by one or two people,” he told me this afternoon.
The inspiration for the commercial, he says, was the grandfather of one of his partners who spent much of his time trapping squirrels and moving them off his property. “He’d bring them across the High Bridge and sometimes paint their tails red to see if they came back. Everybody seems to know someone obsessed by squirrels.”
It took about eight hours to shoot the video last month and another eight hours to edit it.
“One thing about living in the Twin Cities,” Sturm says, “is how easy it was to find actors to come and work for nothing. We just put an ad on Craigslist and got about 30 responses, including women to wear bikinis outdoors in November.”
How much did it cost? “Don’t tell my wife,” Sturm said. “It’s about $260.”
“I had to rent a squirrel suit”
