Director A and director B are traveling north on a four o’clock train from San Diego to Los Angeles, at a rate of 125 miles per hour. Director A is riding incognito and thinking about how to get the attention of a certain agency executive. B has just completed a stand-in gig and is returning home. They have never met. A day earlier, director C boards a plane from Johannesburg, bound for Dallas. In Dallas, C peeks in on an editing session and then makes a connecting flight three hours later to LAX airport. Meanwhile, director D enters a movie theater in West Hollywood to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for the fourth time. Carefully read the passages below and identify who directors A, B, C and D are. You have 20 minutes.
(Note: The previous question has no mathematical grounding whatsoever. We just want you to check out this spring’s line-up of up-and-coming commercial directors. Mathematicians need not apply).
WHITEY BEL-AIR III
There’s something to be said for having enthusiasm for your work. There’s also something to be said about someone who feigns going to prison to get the attention of an advertising executive. Is it psycho or genius? Just ask Court Crandall, creative partner at Ground Zero, Marina del Rey, Calif., what he thought when director Whitey Bel-Air III of Hollywood-based Space Program showed up in shackles at the agency’s office.
This past December, Bel-Air called Crandall and left a message asking him to look at Bel-Air’s reel before he had to "go away for a while." The director, who had been fruitlessly hounding Crandall, confessed in the message that he had to serve some time in jail and beseeched Crandall to look at his reel to give him some hope while in the big house. Intrigued, Crandall returned Bel-Air’s call.
"I thought, either that’s the most ingenious marketing ploy I’ve ever heard," relates Crandall, "or I feel sorry for the guy."
For a month after the phone call, Bel-Air laid low, supposedly in jail. Meanwhile, Crandall had forgotten about the whole thing—until he got a message written on stationary from Lompoc, a maximum security prison in Lompoc, Calif., stating that Bel-Air was going to be released into Crandall’s custody on Jan. 26, 2001. Space Program executive producer Bill Reilly corroborated the story by phoning Crandall, saying he’d just been to see Bel-Air in jail. A few days later, a "sheriff" showed up at Ground Zero with a van full of ex-cons in shackles, including Bel-Air.
Crandall, slightly suspicious but not sure what to make of it, signed for Bel-Air, let him change in the bathroom and had a brief chat with him. After making a list of 10 reasons why Bel-Air’s story didn’t fly, Crandall called Bel-Air the next day and told him "the jig was up."
Bel-Air planned and filmed the whole thing as a self-promotion piece to submit to awards shows, namely the Belding Awards, an industry competition sponsored by the Advertising Club of Los Angeles. This year, Crandall will serve as an emcee for the event. But Bel-Air also did it because, in his estimation, "Court Crandall does the best friggin’ work out there."
"It wasn’t just a silly prank," says Crandall. "It showed that he had an eye for detail and knew how to pull off a joke subtly without getting too over-the-top. It made me think that if I hired the guy, he’d do good work." In fact, Crandall says he plans to keep Bel-Air in mind for some spec work when the right project comes up.
In a way, the joke says a lot about who Bel-Air is: the guy with the chutzpah to successfully pull one over on Crandall. His energy, cockiness and (at extreme moments) hubris are what help to make him a talented filmmaker.
Three years ago, Bel-Air shot a short film, Who’s Whitey?, featuring several third-person accounts of Bel-Air, interspersed with Bel-Air’s own personal assessment. The third-party witnesses paint a picture of an angry, psychotic, delinquent, cynical, short man. But by Bel-Air’s account, he just wants to do something "neat" and "make lots of money." In the film’s most entertaining moment, he trashes some renowned commercial directors, proclaiming Joe Pytka, Kinka Usher and Tony Kaye dead. "Those guys aren’t funny," he relates, with his face cast in shadows. "Those guys aren’t clever. They’re assholes."
Bel-Air tells SHOOT that those statements are flattery: "I’m envious of those guys, but I’d sooner run over their asses in the street and take their jobs."
Despite the tabloid-esque manner in which he presents himself, Bel-Air is enthusiastic about making commercials. He claims he loves advertising and immersed himself in the business by pouring over One Show books and advertising annuals. "I wanted to learn advertising inside and out, and know what concept was and where I belonged in all that, and then formulate a marketing plan for myself," Bel-Air explains.
Reilly bought into that marketing plan last summer after the director ran some spec work through Space Program. The spots were for Xscream, a roller coaster featured at Boomers Park, Dania Beach, Fla. The ads, conceived by art director Marcus Wesson and copywriter Mick DiMaria of Mendelsohn|Zien Advertising, Los Angeles, feature people preparing to handle the extreme thrill of riding the roller coaster. In "Cables," a guy has jumper cables attached to his nipple rings, evoking a mighty scream. And in "Tape," a man covers the hairy back of another man in duct tape and then rips it off. Each ends with the tag, "Prepare Yourself." Palace Entertainment, the owner of the amusement park, picked up the Xscream work, and the ads aired in Florida. At press time, Bel-Air was shooting another job out of Mendelsohn|Zien for Dole Fruit Cups, but wasn’t at liberty to talk about the project in any detail.
Bel-Air tried various facets of production before deciding on directing—he’s been everything from a production assistant, to a gaffer, to a set electrician. He also served a short stint as a cameraman. "I thought I wanted to be a DP," he says, "but that sucked because the director had the best time and I was working my ass off."
It was after trying every aspect of production that Bel-Air decided the only place for him was in the director’s chair. As he says in his short film, regarding directors bossing people around on movie sets: "I’ve seen it before and it looks bitchin’."
SHAWN DRISCOLL
One could argue that director Shawn Driscoll ended up at bicoastal Coppos Films purely by accident. According to Driscoll, Coppos is located right next door to the Bank of America branch where he keeps an account. One day, Driscoll decided to find out what kind of company Coppos was.
"I went home and looked them up on the Internet and thought, ‘Why don’t I just take my reel in the next time I do my banking?’ " recalls Driscoll. "So I did, and the [day after dropping the reel off], I got a call."
And that’s just the kind of guy Driscoll is—laid back. When you talk to him, he doesn’t seem to be especially in a hurry. He takes his time and states his ideas clearly—a quality that translates to his commercial work. Driscoll signed with Coppos early this year based on the strength of three spec spots. One piece he directed for Volkswagen, "CD Changer," was featured in "The Best Work You May Never See Gallery" (SHOOT, 1/19, p. 15). In the ad, a macho guy sits in a brand-new black convertible, admiring his perfectly coifed hair in the side-view mirror. A Volkswagen Beetle pulls up next to him and Macho Guy looks at its nerdy driver with pity and disdain—until a blonde head pops up on the passenger side, suggesting that the VW driver was just getting lucky. Mr. Machismo looks away, wondering if he’s seeing things, until he turns back and spies the woman going down again. As it turns out, she was just looking for a CD on the floor, but cool guy doesn’t need to know that. His conclusion: "I gotta get one of those."
The ad is paired with a second VW spot—this one featuring a close-up shot of a man sitting on his front stoop in the rain, with a goofy grin on his face, completely oblivious to the fact that he’s getting wet. The song "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" plays in the background. The camera pans back to reveal that he’s been admiring his new Volkswagen Beetle.
The third effort," Swing & Miss," is for Titleist golf balls, and features a man woefully bad at the game. The only action in the ad is the poor guy’s repeated attempts to hit the ball. At its conclusion, a deadpan super reads, "We don’t make you a better golfer, we make you a better ball."
Driscoll contends that his job as a commercial director is to sell the product, but to do it as creatively as possible. To him, that means keeping things simple and taking a more human approach. "All through art school the one thing that was always discussed was, simplicity in design is always the best thing," says Driscoll, who points to Volkswagen’s advertising as a model for great, sustained ad work. "That’s why I picked VW [to base my spec work on], because I wanted to stay in that genre of how those kinds of commercials are done."
Driscoll brings to his directing a rich background that includes acting, graphic design, and a film degree from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Va. While in school, he thought that taking an acting class would help him as a director. During the course of his training, he got some stand-in work for John Cusack on the movie True Colors. After that, whenever Cusack shot a film, he requested Driscoll to be his stand-in—those projects included Being John Malkovich, directed by Spike Jonze of bicoastal/international Satellite. At press time, Driscoll was just finishing up standing in for Cusack on the upcoming film America’s Sweethearts, directed by Joe Roth. Driscoll says that after this film wraps, he’s closing the door on stand-in work.
"As I was working on filming things, I could always fall back on standing in, because it was the equivalent to what a waiter job would be," explains Driscoll. "Plus, it kept me constantly in the loop in terms of equipment or working with directors. It’s where I learned a lot of things."
As an actor, Driscoll has appeared in a national spot for Circuit City that later earned him a job as a graphic designer in that company’s advertising department. After two years with the Richmond, Va.-headquartered electronics dealer, he moved to Orlando, Fla., to pursue acting and to "get out from behind the computer," as he puts it. He subsequently appeared in HBO’s From the Earth to the Moon, and also had roles in Thirteen Days and the yet-to-be-released TV Cowboy. But whether he was doing stand-in work or acting, Driscoll continued to shoot whenever he could.
He’s directed three short films: 59 Second Gunfight and The Exam—both to be completed later this year—and The Stand-In, which spoofs the Los Angeles Times’ trailer, "Get the Times." The latter can be currently viewed on entertainment site ifilm.com.
LIZELLE MES
It’s ironic that South African native Lizelle Mes’ first foray into the U.S. spot market was with an ad that called for syrupy-sweet images of Americana: cherry pie, a red barn, a high school marching band. The commercial was to promote Xcel Energy, a relatively new Midwestern electric and natural gas utility based in Minneapolis. What most likely won Mes the job (in spite of her non-American origins) was her ability to bring Xcel’s logo—a yin yang-like red swoosh—to life.
The spot—awarded to Mes through her stateside representative, Creative Management Partners (CMP), bicoastal and Chicago, in affiliation with Velocity Afrika, Johannesburg—was shot in Dallas last October for agency McClain Finlon, Denver. Titled "Introduction," the commercial depicts the classic American virtues of hard work and family values, while a sincere voiceover touts the merits of the new company. What makes this otherwise banal concept exciting is that a double red swoosh is uniquely infused into each shot in a lush and interesting way—for example, in one scene a florist creates an arrangement of red and white roses in the formation of Xcel’s corporate identity.
Hence, Mes managed to do two things: capture the essence of America, and embed the company’s logo into the collective conscience. "The funny thing about America is there’s so much [of the culture] filtering down from the movies we watch that we are actually much more familiar with America than we think," explains Mes of her preparation for the Norman Rockwell-esque scenes. "One of my talents is to watch people. I pick up things very quickly and adapt. It was actually more of a shock when we got home!"
Mes signed with Velocity three years ago; prior to that to that, she had worked at the company for three years as a creative assistant to the directors in the research and development department.
"We would talk about jobs and how to shoot them and I would help with the creative planning," she explains. "Because you work so closely with the directors from start to end, it gives you really good grounding—so it just felt natural that [directing] would be the next thing I do."
Last January, Velocity began its stateside affiliation with CMP, a move that excites Mes, who eventually wants to direct features. According to Mes, there are built-in difficulties when it comes to trying to shoot longform in South Africa. "We have amazing stories in South Africa, but we do not have good script writers, so it’s a bit stressing," she relates.
Most of Mes’ spot work so far has been based on strong visuals. She uses deeply saturated colors, and composes each shot as if it were a still photograph. "I’ve been collecting photography books since I was very young. I actually thought I was going to be a still photographer," says Mes. But this year, she wants to move away from being classified as a visuals director. "I want to branch out more towards humor and reality and performance. It hits much closer to people’s hearts," she reasons.
To that end, Mes has just shot two spots for the South African market that represent a departure from her current style. At press time, she had just wrapped a BMW commercial out of TBWA Hunt Lascaris, Johannesburg. The spot, called "Classic Movie," is shot like a film from a half-century ago, with two people in a car before a badly projected moving background.
Just a few weeks earlier, she had helmed a spot for Nike titled "Line Up," via The Jupiter Drawing Room, Johannesburg. The ad, shot like a television broadcast, captures the moment when the announcer introduces the starting line-up before a basketball game. The camera pans across a row of tall African-American basketball players and suddenly comes to an empty space. When the camera looks down, it comes to a middle-aged white man who is part of the team. With Nike shoes, anyone can play.
Aside from the U.S. and South Africa, Mes is represented separately in eight different countries around the globe.
JORDAN SCOTT
One might think that if you’re the daughter of famed feature and commercial director Ridley Scott, and you’re the niece of Tony Scott, it’s a given that you’ll become a director. After all, look at sons Jake and Luke Scott. But for Jordan Scott, the youngest in this tribe of renowned directors to join bicoastal RSA USA, it is something she came to in her own time.
"When everybody else [in your family is directing], you’re just determined to do something else," she explains. "I was interested in a million other things. I honestly didn’t think I’d end up being a director."
But perhaps it’s just in the Scott blood, because on her first time out helming a spec music video, Scott’s reaction was, "Holy shit, this is the most fun I’ve ever had!"
The fun continues for Scott, who just helmed an ad for Folgers titled "Music," out of D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, New York, that debuted during the telecast of the Grammy Awards. The spot promotes a program funded by Folgers and the Grammy Foundation. Called "Wakin’ Up The Music," it aims to donate money to elementary school music programs. The commercial features a medley of young students singing and playing instruments, while supered messages relate the benefits of music for children.
Scott moved to Los Angeles from England five years ago to study painting at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, Calif. Disenchanted with school, she dropped out in her first semester and went to work as a personal assistant to Jules Daly, then a producer (now managing director) at RSA USA, the production house owned by her father, Ridley Scott, and uncle Tony Scott. After a year with Daly, she moved on to assist Ellen Jacobson, an executive producer at bicoastal Public Works.
"At that point I was interested [in directing], but I think I was being a bit chicken," Jordan Scott recalls. "Ellen said to me, ‘You can do this and I’m going to help you.’ "
Shortly thereafter, Scott directed the aforementioned spec clip for a band called Fine, through Black Dog, RSA USA’s clips division. While it never aired, Scott was sold on directing and continued to seek out low-budget music video projects, for which she mainly wrote treatments. "I didn’t work for a while because you need to show people what you can do before they’re willing to hand over a whole job to you, which was frustrating because I knew I could do it, but I had to prove it first," says Scott.
In ’98, Scott scored three PSAs for a gun-control organization called Project Exile, through The Martin Agency, Richmond, Va. The spots feature powerful moments that send a clear message to the viewer about the impact of gun violence. In "Chalkboard," a young African-American boy stands at a schoolroom chalkboard. First he draws a picture of a boy, explaining "This is me …" He continues to draw a picture of his mommy, but when he gets to his father’s portrait, he draws a chalk outline from a crime scene. A supered message reads: "Since 1995 over 200 children have lost their fathers to illegal guns." The simplicity of the shots coupled with the boy’s innocent narrative is unforgettable.
One of Scott’s strengths as a director is her ability to tell a story through the keen portrayal of human interaction with very little dialogue. In a music video she directed for the band Cut Le Roc titled "Fallen," a couple quarrels on the beach and the woman runs away upset. The man puts a spell on the woman and terrible things start to happen to her. She gets attacked by a dog and harassed by a group of children. In the end, she runs back to him and the viewer is left to wonder, is he a bastard or a saint? Is he saving her from herself or from something else? Whatever the case, the couple’s interaction makes one think.
Scott says she draws much of her inspiration from still photography and from going to the movies "about four times a week," in her estimation. And of course there is her family. "If I’m ever unsure of how to do something, I will always go to one of them and ask, because it’s probably the best advice I can get," states Scott. When she saw Gladiator, for which her father received an Oscar nomination as best director, she couldn’t figure out how he had accomplished a few of the shots, so she rang him up to ask. "He told me how he did everything, and he wrote it all down for me and spelled it out," Scott relates. "I still have that."
While Scott’s best possible resource may be just a phone call away, she still has to work on her career like everybody else. She hopes to get into directing features some day, but knows that it’s a long time in coming. Meanwhile, she’s constantly writing down ideas, ripping photographs out of magazines and planning what she’ll do next. "There are still so many things I want to try … I just think that anyone who can do something that’s their number one hobby for a living has got to be the luckiest person," she says. "I am unbelievably lucky."
