In the 12 years he’s spent making spots and music videos, Samuel Bayer has become one of the top names in the business. Both a director and a cinematographer, Bayer has lent his striking style to ads for Toyota, Nike, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Visa and AOL—not to mention landmark music videos such as Nirvana’s "Smells Like Teen Sprit." Though his work ranges from heartfelt to action-packed, all of it shares a visual acuity well suited for the big screen. It begs the question: Why isn’t this guy directing feature films yet?
"I’ve had a very rough road in features," says Bayer, who signed with bicoastal RSA USA earlier this year for spotwork. "For instance, I was attached to Monster’s Ball, but got talked out of doing it. The nice thing is, I think I’ve grown older, wiser and a bit more humble. I think all my years of [directing spots] has prepared me that much more for making a feature film."
Not any feature film, however. "Most of the stuff that’s offered [by major studios] to commercial or music video guys is a certain genre, and I’m not really interested in that," he shares. "I don’t want to do a comic book film. I want to do something that actually has some tension that actors can sink their teeth into."
To that end, Bayer says he’s currently in development on a project that features "an actor who has been nominated multiple times for an Academy Award." And earlier this year, he switched production houses, from bicoastal Mars Media—a satellite of bicoastal HSI Productions that had repped him since he began directing spots—to RSA. "I’ve got nothing but nice things to say about HSI," he says. "It’s just I was there for almost ten years, and I needed a change."
A longtime friend of director Tony Scott, one of the principals at RSA, Bayer adds, "With trying to develop feature film projects, they were offering something that nobody else could. The idea of discussing, producing and developing films with Ridley [Scott] and Tony is an exciting prospect. I have a lot of respect for them as filmmakers."
Bayer got a taste of moviemaking last year when he helmed his first short film, Torch Runner, one of five films that were part of the successful effort on the part of NYC2012, the committee working to make the Big Apple the bid city for the U.S. Olympic Committee. The film was produced via Mars Media. (The other short films were directed by Bob Giraldi of bicoastal CaseGiraldi Media; Bryan Buckley of bicoastal/ international hungry man; Lenard Dorfman and Robert Leacock of bicoastal/international @radical. media, who acted as co-directors; and Jeff Lovinger of now shuttered Lovinger Mahoney Adelson.)
"Out of anything I’ve done in the last couple of years, I’m really proud of that film," says Bayer of Torch Runner, which, like the other NYC2012 shorts, was shot entirely pro bono. "The reason I did it was because I was a New Yorker for ten years, and I lived right by the World Trade Center. I had friends who were there on Sept. 11, and I was interested in making a hopeful film about the city, a film that could touch people emotionally."
Set to John Lennon’s "Imagine," "Torch Runner" features runners carrying a torch through various parts of New York—the Brooklyn Bridge, Chinatown, Times Square and Fifth Avenue, among others—before the final runner, a young girl, lights the Olympic flame. The spot culminates with a quick shot of a lit-up Ground Zero, and aerials of the Statue of Liberty, surrounded by fireworks.
Since no one on the spot—from John Lennon’s estate to the Grucci Brothers fireworks company—received payment, Bayer truly had to rely on the kindness of strangers. "You’d think [New York City’s] Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg could afford to buy me a cup of coffee, but he didn’t even do that," Bayer laughs. "I really have to give my old production company credit for allowing me to do it. We had to get favors from every one, but we were able to. That was a very expensive production that was shot for free."
Smell of success
A graduate of New York’s School of Visual Arts, Bayer spent 10 years as a painter before moving to Los Angeles and trying his hand at music videos—the first of which was "Smells Like Teen Spirit." After that initial success, he went on to lens videos for such artists as Garbage, Lenny Kravitz and David Bowie, and signed with Mars Media to direct commercials in 1994. Thanks to spots like Nike’s powerful anthem to girls’ sports, "If You Let Me Play," through Wieden+Kennedy, Portland Ore.—not to mention a slew of breathtaking Mountain Dew ads via BBDO New York—Bayer soon became one of the industry’s most sought-after directors. But he never considered hiring a DP. "When I started off in music videos, I couldn’t afford a good DP, so I taught myself how to do it," he explains. "Now, I don’t know of any other way to work. I need to look through the camera. I need to know what the exposures are. The look of my work is not something I know how to dictate. I just know how to make it up in my head."
Bayer says he enjoys working on CGI-intensive commercials like Mountain Dew’s "Animated," via BBDO. (His last project out of Mars Media, the spot turns extreme athletes into modern day Wile E. Coyotes as they pursue a Road Runner-esque can of Dew.) But it’s those dauntingly real ads—Toyota 4Runner’s "Everest," for example—that remain closest to his heart.
Helmed out of Mars Media via Saatchi & Saatchi LA, Torrance, Calif., "Everest" is, Bayer reports, "the most difficult spot I’ve worked on." The ad, which broke in January, features footage of a 4Runner driving up Mount Everest, and documentary-style interviews with the first man who conquered it, Sir Edmund Hillary. "Saatchi & Saatchi wanted to do it for real, and we really did it," he says. "We drove a prototype truck five hundred miles in Mainland China."
Because of government restrictions, "there were more agency people let into the country than crew members," Bayer remembers. "I think I had sixty Chinese locals that I never worked with, and a handful of guys from the States. And we had no equipment. The cameras were handheld, people were getting sick—it was tough. It wasn’t something that I’d like to do again necessarily, but I think it was a pretty amazing experience for everybody that we actually went there."
And he wouldn’t have done it any other way. "This is a business based on illusion, and there are no illusions in that commercial," he states. "It was a real interview with Sir Edmund Hillary. It was as close as I could get that truck to the top of the mountain.
"I’d welcome anyone who smokes two packs of cigarettes a day like I do to smoke at seventeen-thousand feet," the director added.
Since signing with RSA, Bayer’s been keeping as busy as ever. His many high-profile projects include AOL’s "Backstage," through BBDO, in which MTV host Carson Daly gets his thunder stolen by the animated AOL Running Man logo.
Whether it’s in the world of advertising or feature films, Bayer is always up for a challenge. "I like pushing the limit on either technology or extras or the difficulty of shots," he says. "It’s the only way you learn, and the only way you can sit back and go, ‘Wow, I really accomplished something.’ "
