A woman in green appears with a can of glowing green paint. The masked men dip their brushes into the can and suddenly green is everywhere. To an energizing blast of Brahms, the color green spills onto the television screen and splashes onto the dark wall, where the outline of a small, sporty-looking automobile comes into focus.

"The Green Revolution," produced entirely by students in Cal State Northridge's Center for Visual Com­munications (VisCom), is one of only four student-created commercials selected from a field of 23 entries to air on Southern California television starting the week of Sept. 8.

Of the six entries submitted by CSUN, four were finalists and one, "The Green Revolution," made the cut.

VisCom's commercial was part of a first-of-its-kind student competition-the Southern California Ford Dealers' 2008 Ford Focus College Film Program, conceived and directed by Dailey and Associates Advertising of West Hollywood.

The students' assignment: to create original 30- and 15-second commercials for the launch of the 2008 Ford Focus PZEV.

"The Green Revolution" was "a visual metaphor illustrating the consequences of uniformity and the possibilities offered by challenging the status quo," according to the VisCom "pitch" statement. Ford was sold on it.

VisCom managing director Dave Moon and student Chris Oneill (second from right) show off a Ford Focus to students Nir Gutman, Mauricio Urquilla, Jenny San and Christina Choi (far right).

"Everyone was passionate about the project," said student Chris Oneill, concept and art director on the "Green Revolution" commercial. "We really formed a team."

During the two to three months it took to develop the concept and storyboard, complete production work and shoot the video, it was a team that ran on fumes.

"They were sleeping here in the VisCom studio," said Joe Bautista, VisCom's creative director and a CSUN art lecturer. "A couple of them got to know the custodian on a first-name basis."

"We basically fell off the face of the planet for three weeks," said Leslie Africa, who worked closely with Oneill on concept, music and other aspects of the project. "You woke up, you worked on it, you ate, you worked on it."

Africa and Oneill were among those who worked on all six commercials, keeping a tight schedule on top of other classes and other VisCom projects.

The commercial, arresting and vivid, shows no signs of the shoestring budget with which it was developed.

"The resourcefulness of our students was mind-boggling," said art professor Dave Moon, VisCom managing director.

Though it appears to have been shot on a stark green plain, intersected by the long grey wall, Oneill said. "We actually shot it in the back lot of CSUN's Art Design Center."

Except for the characters, all of the commercial's visual aspects-including the wall, the environment, even the paint on the brush and the paint splatters on the wall-were created digitally within 3D space, he said.

"The guys in the mask? That actually was one guy, reproduced over and over," he added.

The gas mask was rented, the coat worn by the male actor (team member Mike Rogers, doing double duty) was on loan and Oneill's own wardrobe was used for the rest of Rogers' costume.

Tara Tucker, also on the team, doubled as the mysterious lady in green, in a dress she purchased with her own funds.

Oneill took advantage of an overcast day-ideal for the use of chroma key (greenscreen or bluescreen) - and shot from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

"I was very demanding," admitted the graphic design major, who will graduate in January with a concentration in motion graphics. "Sometimes I'd have them shoot one section 30 times. And Tara was freezing in that green dress."

Competing against Chapman University, the Art Center College of Design, the University of Southern California and Cal State Long Beach, CSUN shared top competition laurels with its sister CSU campus.

Like the other schools, it received from the Southern California Ford Dealers a Ford Focus SES and a $2,500 scholarship donation, proceeds from which will benefit future VisCom students, Moon said.

"One of the things Joe and I are most proud of is that the students really got involved not only in thinking deeply about the concepts, but in how to execute them," said Moon.

Like the other team members snapped up by industry standouts such as Fox Studios and the Barbara Barry design studio, Oneill did not have to look far for opportunity.

He recently became one of the few international paid interns selected by Blind, a noted Santa Monica motion graphics firm.