How do you shoot a 450 pound tiger in a FedEx canvas bag?
Verrrrrry carefully and using only cameras, so the producers at our advertising agency report.
To launch the campaign announcing the completed merger of Flying Tigers with Federal Express the creative people at BBDO (Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne) in New York thought it would be neat to “let the cat out of the bag” by showing a tiger ripping his way out of a Federal Express package.
Ed Maslow, creative director and art director at BBDO, said it was a little more dramatic and complicated than that.
“First of all, it took two tigers and two days for us to film just one 30-second commercial,” Maslow explained.
Sarah and Valentino, a brother/sister feline duo, were hired for the job, along with their trainers. Each of these four-year-old Bengal tigers weighed 400 to 450 pounds and came complete with original equipment – claws and jaws untouched.
“These animals supposedly are ‘trained’ since their keepers have worked with them since they were newborn,” he continued. “But in looking at them, you were keenly aware of their jungle instinct as they roamed the stage. You never lost the feeling that these were truly wild animals.”
Barbara Mullins, BBDO executive producer, was mesmerized by them. “They were absolutely the sexiest most sensual animals to observe,” Mullins said. “They had iridescent eyes. Their trainers, though, told us not to look them straight in the eye – it would be totally confrontational with the tiger seeing you as a threat.”
Temperamental stars
In preparing for the filming, the agency crew members were also told not to make any loud noises or sit down. Standing up taller than the tigers was a subtle intimidation, while sitting down might provoke an attack.
Sarah and Valentino were prepared, too. During the few days before the filming, their food rations were slightly reduced making them eager to follow instructions from their trainers in return for rewards – slabs of raw meat
“Normally they eat about 6 to 8 pounds of meat a day,” said Mullins. “By the time we had finished one day, though, Sarah alone had consumed 16 pounds of meat, and that was when she literally walked off the set like a temperamental star. She didn’t have any more incentive to perform.”
Mullins added that it took two tigers because, while they’re trained, they have a limited repertoire of “tricks”. Also, despite their filial relationship, Sarah and Valentino were kept at different ends of the set to avoid any hostility between them, with only one tiger bumming around freely in the spotlight at a time.
Ensuring the tigers were well treated was a representative from an animal protection society who stayed on the set at all times and kept notes. For the final sequence of the commercial, the tiger was supposed to charge at the camera and leap over it while the sound track simulated the jet taking off.
“We swapped places with the tiger,” Maslow amused. “All of us crowded into a cage with the camera while the trainer stood on top and waved a big slab of meat to coax the tiger into a flying leap.”
How do you bag a tiger?
Getting the tiger inside a bag was another issue. It would have been impossible to restrain a wild animal inside a bag, even for a short time. Instead, a canvas tunnel was built and the tiger walked through it. But the commercial showed something inside the bag moving around – what was it?
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“Two ‘little people’ – tiny stuntmen who practiced in a tiger suit for several days going through the motions of a tiger getting to its feet inside a bag,” Maslow said. “They had the tough job.”
To show the FedEx bag being ripped open, a prop man donned a tiger costume head and manipulated stuffed tiger paws tipped with razor blades to slice through the canvas. With its final sequence showing the great creature “taking off” like a jet, the tiger commercial launched the rest of the marketing campaign.
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The third tiger
On a final note, there was indeed a third tiger that played an important role in our campaign.
“Before we filmed the tiger commercial, we had to produce a newspaper ad in July with a still photo of the tiger emerging from the bag,” BBDO’s Maslow explained. “We used a fellow named Rajah, another tiger ‘actor.’
“In the first ‘teaser’ ad we stuffed a bag with a paper and used a fake paw coming out of the bag. And in the follow-up ad showing the tiger, we had to shoot the tiger separately and splice photos together to make it look like he had just popped.
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“The best tigers for this type of work are in California, and that’s where we found Rajah, he added. “But we had to fly him to New York for the photography session.
“How did we manage it? How else? We flew him in by Flying Tigers, of course.”
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Originally published in Worldwide – Federal Express Employee Magazine, Volume 1, Number 5, 1989