What’s a commercial director to do when an actor insists on performing naked? Ask David Shane.
Shane, who is repped by bi-coastal/international hungry man, was shooting a spot called "Birthday Party" for Half.com via Odiorne Wilde Narraway & Partners, San Francisco. It involved a young man receiving a David Hasselhoff CD from his grandmother, then selling it on Half.com to a couple of German guys, who are seen at a computer in a room plastered with posters of the actor. According to Shane, one of the actors portraying a Hasselhoff fan kept trying to take off his clothes between takes. "There was a ridiculous negotiation after every take about whether he could do this or not," Shane recalls.
At one point, Shane even threatened to cut him out of the commercial. "That was good for a few more takes," says the director. "On one level it was annoying, but on another it was great for the weird, discordant energy we were trying to create."
Shane admits that he did toy with the idea of allowing the actor to be naked, but decided that "there’s something funnier about him being in the bad ’80s arena-rock leather." Finally a compromise was reached: The actor could be pant-less under the desk (and out of the camera’s view).
Thinking on his feet seems to come naturally to Shane, who is the son of stand-up comic Jerry Shane. He says that he was always around funny people while growing up, so comedy worked its way into his body by osmosis. In college he majored in creative writing, but spent most of his time in theater productions and a comedy improv troupe. Shane’s career has proven that the time was well spent. In a sense, he even improvised his directorial debut. While Shane was a copywriter at TBWA GGT Simons Palmer, London, he and his then-art director, Lynn Kendrick, were called on to helm an Ecover laundry detergent campaign. The resulting spots, which "recycled" 40-year-old detergent commercials, won a bronze at the British Television Awards in 1993.
Shane likens this experience to attending film school for free. He says that, at the time, he was under the impression that "if what was exposed on film was funny, I would be fine." But he admits that his modus operandi was to "constantly torment" directors of photography and gaffers with questions about lenses and lighting.
Dog’s Life
What he has learned is now on display in two well-received spots for eBay via Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (GS&P), San Francisco. In "Dogs," man’s best friends bury jewels, soil chairs and snatch a roast turkey off a table to the tune of "How Much Is That Doggy in the Window?"
In "New House," things fall apart—with a vengeance—while the pop classic "Que Sera, Sera" plays. Both scenarios let eBay remind viewers that they can find just about anything on the site.
Shane is quick to praise the GS&P team—creative director Rich Silverstein, art director Karin Onsager-Birch, and copywriter Blake Kelly—for the success of these spots. He says that everyone involved was somewhat nervous going into the project, since eBay had never advertised on such a large scale. They worried that the ads might "compromise the brand." But everyone seems to be happy with the results, including eBay—which, Shane notes, sent him a nice Christmas present.
The entry of Internet companies into the ad world over the past five or six years has had a liberating effect on advertising, according to Shane. Clients are now much more trusting of agency creatives’ offbeat ideas than they were in the early ’90s, when Shane was a copywriter, and he says the new atmosphere has benefited him. "Great things happen when you dare to be stupid," he deadpans.
"Dare to be stupid" is just one of the tenets of comedy improv that Shane has applied to his commercial work. While Shane stresses that he never rewrites the script—in fact, he thinks that there is more and more good writing in advertising—he does see improv as a way to deepen the script. "Directing, to me, is really about watching and listening and taking what the actors bring to the table," he says.
Accordingly, he pays close attention to casting, where he says he is always trying to avoid cliché. This sometimes extends to using the venerable improv exercise of performing material in the opposite of its intended tone—silly lines read with deadly seriousness, for example.
Stylistically, Shane has found himself branching out more, comparing himself to a to a kid in a candy store as he contemplates all of the techniques available to him. He was particularly pleased with some old film techniques that he used on Powertel’s "Pirate Channel," via Martin/ Williams, Minneapolis, which was shot like a 1930s pirate serial. Shane used lenses and matting techniques common to the era, and for the spot the film was printed, then microwaved. But Shane is quick to add that "it’s still always going to be about story and performance—that’s what interests me."
Shane has also employed his sense of story and performance in the longform world, writing some episodes of the first season of South Park (including "Starvin’ Marvin," in which the kids adopt an Ethiopian child), penning a one-act radio play called My Bath with Albert, and landing a TV development deal with Brillstein Grey. His most recent feature projects are a film script titled Men of Troy, co-written with Chris Henrikson, about a second-rate male escort service; and a short film about "senior citizen porn," with the working title 69, which he plans to direct.
Shane says that even though he is exploring longform options, he always wants to keep a foot in spots, which he likens to doing 40 small films per year. One thing is certain: Whether it’s spot work or features, David Shane will always do comedy. "The good thing about comedy," he states, "is that, at the end of the day, it’s a physiological response: You’re either laughing or you’re not."
