Bicoastal Public Works has signed Sydney, Australia-based director Paul Middleditch for commercial representation. He retains his affiliation with Independent Films, Sydney, for Australian projects.
Middleditch is well established as a commercial comedy/ dialogue director in the Australia/New Zealand region. His credits include ads for Guinness, Pepsi, NEC, Air New Zealand, Yellow Pages, Singtel, and Auckland Savings Bank
Public Works executive producer Ellen Jacobson commented, "I was in awe when I saw his work. He is an amazing filmmaker." She cited, for instance, the Yellow Pages spot "Not Happy," for the actors’ performances, as well as its "well-told and well-edited story." Jacobson also praised the performance of the actress in the Air New Zealand spot "Missing Persons" via Colenso, Auckland, New Zealand, in which the woman answering the phone at the missing persons bureau becomes increasingly frustrated by the barrage of calls she fields.
Born in Wellington, New Zealand, Middleditch began making short films in his homeland at the age of 10. At age 16, one of his films, Several Lives Lost, won a directing award at a local student filmmakers competition, where one of the judges—director Vincent Ward (now at Omaha Pictures)—invited him to work on a film he was directing titled The Navigator. Middleditch worked as a modelmaker, storyboard artist and assistant on the movie, which was released in 1989.
"I got into directing from there," recalled Middleditch. "I was lucky because it’s a very, very small industry [in New Zealand] and there weren’t many young filmmakers because there wasn’t any film school." He subsequently made his feature directing debut on ’97’s Terra Nova, a drama centering on the struggles of a disturbed young woman. It won honors including Best of Festival at the Edinburgh Festival, and Special Distinction For A (Director’s) First Film at the Montreal World Film Festival. Late last year, he wrapped directorial duties on another feature; an experimental, ad-libbed piece currently titled A Tale of Hesitation.
From ages 17 to 21, Middleditch established himself as a prominent music video director. "I won quite a lot of awards, based on the fact that there were only two of us [local directors] doing them," he said. "But still, it was a good experience because they were very low budget and I had to learn how to put them together myself, acting as both producer and director."
At age 21, Middleditch moved to Sydney and expanded into commercial directing. He quickly signed with Sydney-based Robertson Films, where he remained for nearly five years before moving over to Independent Films.
Despite having directed primarily dramatic pieces, Middleditch gravitated towards comedy spots with a style that was unlike that of traditional Australian humor. "In this part of the world there’s a natural attraction to very dry and laconic humor," he said. "I was always attracted to the humor I’d seen from America, which was broader and, in many ways, more experimental. So when I started to apply ideas I’d been seeing from American film or television, it seemed like bolts out of the blue for a lot of people here."
The SkyTV spot "Motel" out of DDB Auckland shows an unlikely pair, a large man and his skinny male companion, checking into a motel room for a couple of hours to the surprise of a young female clerk. It’s revealed that the men simply want the room in order to see a football game on SkyTV. When their team wins, they hug each other joyously—a scene that is misinterpreted by the clerk who is delivering towels to the room.
Another notable spot "Parabola" for NEC via Lintas, Sydney, offers two dweebish office workers. The guy in background discusses the reasons for buying an NEC television; at the spot’s conclusion, the man in the foreground hits a button on a remote—revealing that his "colleague" was actually a very lifelike image on an NEC television screen. Among other awards, the spot won a Gold Clio and a D&AD award. "What I found interesting was the concept of two sort of retards trying to sell a television and, in fact, the television sells itself," said Middleditch.
Middleditch joins a Public Works directorial roster that consists of the teams Roenberg (Espen Sandberg and Joachim Roenning), Felt (Rich Carroll and Dominic Bridges) and Arni & Kinski of GusGus, and helmers Todd Lincoln, Joel Gallen, Julia Jason, Johan Brisinger, Eric Coignoux and Guisseppe Capotondi. A satellite of bicoastal HKM Productions, Public Works is repped on the West Coast by Steven Monkarsh and Elizabeth Newton at In-House Reps, San Francisco; in the Midwest by Rich Newman and Sue Rosen of Rich Newman Associates, Chicago; and on the East Coast by Peter McCann at M1 Management, New York.
