Brett Froomer loves to shoot film. When the director/DP, who is represented for spots by Stiefel+Company, Santa Monica, is on the job, he often spends "non-shooting" days, well, shooting; Froomer frequently heads out with a camera to capture footage for his visually dazzling commercials.
"I love working with just the agency," he notes. "We’ll go out with three or four people and shoot. You can’t believe how well these shots work in the cut.
"Some of the best visuals are done with very few people," he continues. "It’s just about the photography and the performance, and you get those magic moments. Shooting close-ups or vistas is very time consuming. You can’t shoot them with thirty guys waiting at the truck while you wait for the right light. I shoot that on my own. That’s what turns me on—I just grab my cameras and go."
Anyone who views Froomer’s sharp-looking reel won’t be surprised that he worked as a still photographer for many years before moving into spotwork. His distinctive visual touch is evident in Budweiser’s "Rookie," a spot he helmed via Palmer Jarvis DDB Downtown, Toronto.
The ad shows a triumphant football team heading into the locker room after upsetting an opponent. Bobby Shanks, who has just scored a last-second touchdown for his underdog team, is the center of attention. Inside the locker room, Shanks is seen holding a football, and confidently striding over to a player quietly sitting at his locker. Shanks says, "Hey, rookie. Nice block back there." Then he tosses the young player the ball and adds, "This belongs to you." The rookie’s facial expression reveals that he’s pleased, and a super comes up, with the words, "King of the unsung." A beat later an image of a Bud bottle, and the phrase "King of beers," wraps up the spot.
Froomer points out that "Rookie" was the sort of big production that didn’t lend itself to the small-or-no-crew shooting he loves so much; yet the spot does display his lush style. "The biggest creative challenge was to light it so that it was theatrical, but looked real," he explains. "For that, we went through heaps and heaps of reference. I lit it and had an operator shoot it, so I could concentrate on the performances, which I’m doing more and more."
One of the most visually striking spots on Froomer’s reel is PGA/ Nike’s "Other Guys," which he directed for GSD&M, Austin, Texas. "Other Guys" features a collection of stunning shots of golfers at play. "That spot gets a tremendous amount of attention," says Froomer. "That’s probably one of the things that led [Palmer Jarvis] to me for the Budweiser spot. The interesting thing is that most of that spot was shot with just me and a camera."
Froomer, who joined Stiefel+ Company in 1998, most recently worked on three ads for Busch Beer—"Surfer," "Fishing" and "Swimming"—out of DDB Chicago. They all feature lush visuals of the outdoors.
The Short Story
When Froomer isn’t busy directing commercials, he’s hard at work on his own personal projects, which include a series of nonfiction short films. "When still photographers want to improve, they go out and shoot," he explains. "They just do things that they like to do. That’s how they connect their heart with their work and that’s how they communicate to agencies where their heart is.
"In film, when people want to get into a new area—for me, it’s dialogue—they find spec spots or spots that weren’t sold and produce those," he continues. "The problem is, you’re being judged on the creative, not on the way you handle the talent or the storytelling—or, in my case, the dialogue."
So Froomer decided to go back to his roots in still photography and work on projects of personal interest. He was determined to create :60 pieces that would demonstrate his ability to tell a story within a short time frame. One of them, A Stoner’s Life, which features a man who has smoked pot every day since ’36, has really taken off, having recently screened at the Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah. The short was also part of the Sydney Film Festival, Australia, and South By Southwest, Austin; and was nominated for a distinguished documentary achievement award from the International Documentary Association.
The hilarious short gets right to the point with its opening shot: a close-up of a marijuana cigarette. A few moments later, the film’s lively instrumental reggae track kicks in, and the wild ride begins. A series of shots shows the man and his wife commenting on his habit. Froomer frames the husband and wife in separate shots to capture the very funny dynamic between these two colorful characters.
"I knew where I wanted to go on that subject by contrasting her with him," he explains. "So I put it together and it really had this life beyond what I thought it was."
Froomer knew early on that he wanted to go into advertising. At 16, he assisted the well-known director and photographer Sid Avery in Los Angeles. Later, he moved to New York where he shot still work for 10 years for such clients as Nikon, IBM, American Express and Kodak.
"I reached a point in photography where I found that I needed my pictures to move so that I could get an emotion out of them," says Froomer of his switch to live action. "I was seeing great work in commercials and film. It had the third dimension I was missing."
Musing on his career shooting stills and spots, Froomer observes, "What photography gave me for film was that every image has to have an essence of being.
"In print," he continues, "it’s taking an entire statement or thesis for the subject and putting it in that one image. In film, it’s breaking that down into many images so that all the shots work together to make one statement."
