Having a Ball With the Manscaped 'Love Story'

We were looking for a way to openly talk about balls in the mainstream and show the emotional connection every guy has with them. A love story. A love story where too much hair got in the way.

The idea for the visual metaphor—and I can’t say this loud enough—came from a pair of female creatives: Sophia Held and Lily Ramos. When we read that initial scene, of a man walking with his two hairy miniatures, we basically spit our iced coffees out and said “This is it!” The Manscaped team felt the same.

Then it was time to build the world of “The Boys.” Thanks to Fernando Passos, the minis are never the exact same height. One is just a tiny bit shorter than the other.

I fought hard for that hot-tub scene. There was some debate about whether all “boys” float. The jogging scene was the idea of Manscaped CMO Marcelo Kertesz. He thought it’d be funny to see “The Boys” bobbling all over the sidewalk. He was right.

Director J.J. Adler’s approach brought a level of intelligence that made the piece disarmingly dumb without feeling slapstick. To us, she was the woman who could bring “The Boys” to life.

The shoot was incredible. Gareth Parr was our VFX wizard. To keep the effects realistic and natural we shot everything practically. So, all the miniature versions you see are the same actor shot three separate times in the same location, keeping the same lighting, but moving the camera exactly 2x higher and 2x further to shoot them 2x smaller. 

And, of course, shaving (or should we say grooming) was real. The cast agreed to shave their faces, bodies and heads.

From edit to music to finishing, we had one rule: Let the funny breathe. Every decision needs to add to the payoff, which in this case was the product benefit.

Naturally, we all had great debates about the angle our hero should cup one of his boys, or if they bobbled enough in the jogging scene. We all measured the funny by how loud P.J. Pereira (Pereira O’Dell co-founder and creative chairman) laughed at the end. 

Overall, we’ve never laughed so much making anything in our lives. Hopefully the audience will have as much fun watching it as we did creating it—and of course, give their “boys” the love they deserve.