It’s 10 p.m. in Capetown, South Africa, and director Gregor Nicholas has just finished his fifth day of shooting a spot for the Italian telecommunications company Tiscali, via Saatchi & Saatchi, Milan.
Nicholas, who is represented by bicoastal/international @radical. media, has been traveling back and forth between Capetown and Sardinia, Italy, to helm the dialogue-free commercial, which depicts people communicating with each other from various locales. "We’ve had very little prep time," he reports. "We’re shooting in locations that I’ve had to rapidly familiarize myself with."
Though many directors would be exhausted (not to mention jet lagged) by now, Nicholas seems energized. "We’ve just come up with a better idea for one of the scenarios we’re about to film in two days," says the New Zealand-born director. "It all came about from finding an extraordinary character who happened to be riding past on a motorcycle at one of the locations we were shooting at. We chased after him and got him on mini-DV tape, and now we’re going to incorporate him into the action."
It’s been the type of shoot that Nicholas likes best—spontaneous, collaborative, and full of interesting faces. "Something I’m very particular about is casting," relates Nicholas. "I love to find real-looking people. I sort of drive my casting directors insane, up until the last day of pre-production, trying to find the most authentic talent."
That concern with casting played a major role in Visa’s "Broadway Poem," out of BBDO New York—originally an ad that broke last spring, and played up Visa’s sponsorship of the Tony Awards. The spot is a black-and-white montage of Times Square scenes and faces, as well as images of actors and actresses getting ready for the curtain to go up. "We went into the [Broadway theater] community to cast that one," Nichols recounts. "I wanted to get that richness, the diversity of the faces and the characters. I’m very pleased with the way it looks."
"Broadway Poem" was re-cut, and given a new soundtrack—a haunting rendition of "Give My Regards to Broadway"—as a post-Sept. 11 homage to New York and its live theater, re-titled "Broadway Tribute."
"I remember I got a call from the producer, and he was very apprehensive as to how I would react, because they had just re-cut the material," says Nicholas. "He sent me a Quick Time of it. It had an amazing poignancy, but it was very affirming. I was thrilled, actually."
Nicholas views the whole "Broadway Poem" experience as a career highlight. "It was very close to the [Tiscali shoot], in that there was a board, but it was very open to interpretation," he explains. "I was very fortunate in being able to collaborate with the creatives."
Rather than present a picture-postcard version of Broadway, Nicholas tried to capture its gritty essence. Backstage scenes of costumed performers and stagehands are interspersed with sweeping aerial shots of Times Square and images of disparate New Yorkers crossing the busy streets or riding the subway. Though it’s strikingly photographed, the spot’s black-and-white Broadway is not glossy or idealized. "I saw it as an incredible opportunity to capture something beautiful about New York, but keep it as real as possible," Nicholas points out. "I wanted to give it a certain level of romanticism that didn’t cross over into cliché, or sentimentality. I also wanted to give it some scale, which we did with the aerials."
Nicholas worked hard to get natural performances from his actors. "There’s this older guy who we cast as a stagehand, who had been in the original Broadway production of Cabaret. We had him chatting backstage with these dancers in faux-Balinese costumes from The King and I. He was a great raconteur, so he had these girls in the palm of his hand.
"Something that I do quite frequently when I shoot is play music," continues Nicholas. "We were playing Miles Davis, and we were shooting him with the dancers in a very spontaneous, improvised way. We did a bunch of different angles, and afterwards, I went over to him and thanked him. He wasn’t even aware that we’d been filming. He thought we were just mucking around, because nobody had called, ‘Action,’ or, ‘Cut.’ We did the whole spot like that—we shot it in a ‘grabbed’ style."
Improv
Whether he’s filming a montage or a dialogue-based story, Nicholas likes to improvise with his actors. "When I work with actors, it’s all very instinctual," he relates. "Basically, I respond to what I think is true. If I see something that’s fake, I try to help the actor get away from that. Since I haven’t had any training, I operate from the gut."
A former art history and architecture student at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, Nicholas eventually acted on his lifelong interest in film. "I just kind of picked up a camera," he says. "When I first started making my own films, they were very avant-garde. They were collaborations with performance artists and musicians."
When his short film of the percussion group From Scratch, Pacific 3-2-1 Zero, won the Grand Prix at the International Music Market, known as Cannes Midem, in 1994, Nicholas decided to make a career of it. "I realized that making commercials was a way to learn more and work in a bigger arena," he says.
So Nicholas joined with Dorthe Scheffmann to form the New Zealand-based production house This Is It, which has since shuttered. "After a while, [Scheffmann] decided that she was going to go on and have children," the director recalls. "I was becoming more and more focused on being a director and wanting to pursue personal projects. So I decided to seek representation rather than keep going with my own company."
Nicholas signed on with Flying Fish NZ, which has offices in Wellington and Auckland, as well as in London, and with Palomar Pictures, Los Angeles, for representation in the U.S. He shot numerous commercials and short films, as well as the feature film Broken English, in ’96. In ’99 he shifted his representation to @radical.media. "I think my work got a higher profile through my relationship with radical," he says. "From the start, I was getting a look at boards that were exciting and creatively rewarding."
These days, Nicholas says, he divides his time among the European, Australian, and U.S. markets; he also works in New Zealand, having recently directed New Zealand Telecom’s "Flat Out" via Saatchi & Saatchi, Auckland. "In Europe, as well as New Zealand and Australia, the director is very involved in the edit," he observes. "That is one of the aspects of filmmaking that I find particularly exciting. In the juxtaposition of shots and moments, you can manipulate emotions in an amazing way. You don’t get as much of a chance to do that in the U.S."
Of course, there are exceptions. "The [original] Broadway Visa spot was one," he notes. "They embraced my ideas from the beginning, and I gave it my total commitment. I remember when I showed my cut to [BBDO creative] Peter Smith, he made one discreet suggestion, and we changed the last shot. That was it."
