When creatives at Cliff Freeman and Partners, New York, needed someone to helm a campaign for all-American discount store Value City, they chose Neil Harris—a British director who had only recently begun working in the stateside market. "I think they actually wanted [the spots] to have a bit of a European feel," notes Harris, who is represented in the United States by bicoastal Smuggler.
But that was only part of it. "Neil has a very delicate touch with comedy," observes Adam Chasnow, VP/ associate creative director at Cliff Freeman who served as copywriter on the Value City work. (Chasnow has since shifted to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco.) "Those stories needed to be told effectively with no dialogue, and he was able to do that."
The ads all involve regular people behaving like they are wealthy, thanks to the money they’ve saved shopping at Value City. In "Men’s Room," for example, a man in a public restroom washes his hands, then holds them out imperiously, as if expecting the next guy in line to dry them. "German Shepherd" features a woman who has just shaved and groomed her German shepherd to look like a French poodle. In "Car," a husband is surprised to find his wife sitting in the back seat of their sedan, reading the paper as though he were her chauffeur. "Soda" depicts a man in a pizza joint, sampling a glass of pop like it’s fine wine.
According to Harris, the scripts were complete when he received them. "The ideas were so simple, literally just a few lines," he recalls. "There was nothing to change."
He collaborated with the Cliff Freeman team on all other aspects of pre-production. "The creatives got me in at a very early stage," the director says. "I was able to work with them on all the locations, all the casting and everything."
The agency team welcomed the director’s input. "It was a pleasure to work with him," Chasnow states. "It wasn’t one of those cases where you see someone’s reel, and then you go to work and discover you’re on different planets. Casting and overall, we were on the same page."
Harris recalls auditioning approximately 500 actors and real people for the spots, but the lengthy search paid off. With their unique looks and low-key acting styles, the Value City talent is notably—and humorously—believable. Chasnow credits the director: "He wanted to play it very real, which we liked."
That wasn’t always easy. "We needed subtleties in performance for the spots to work," Harris notes. "But that can take awhile to get to because a lot of actors can be a bit ‘big.’ You have to sort of say, ‘Your performance in itself isn’t funny, really—it’s the overall spot that’s funny,’ and get them to let the action speak for itself."
"We also liked the way he shot [the campaign], even when he went in for close-ups," adds Chasnow. "We hadn’t planned that, but we wound up using a lot of it because it was really well thought out."
Hoop shots
Though Harris has been directing for years, he’s relatively new to the stateside market. Indeed, the spot that initially attracted the attention of the Cliff Freeman creatives, Sony PlayStation’s "Freeway," was one of his first American projects, and it was done less than two years ago.
"It was basketball players on a freeway, playing amongst the traffic," Harris recalls of the ad, which he directed via TBWA/Chiat/Day, San Francisco, out of his former U.K. roost, the London office of bicoastal/international Partizan. "It was all these playing shots, and then ultimately compositing the cars and the players. It was actually simple to shoot, but getting that simplicity required a hell of a lot of [pre-production] work." (Harris is currently repped in Britain by London-based Stink, and in France by 1/33 Productions, Suresnes, France.)
As with the Value City campaign, Harris enjoyed collaborating with creatives on "Freeway." "In America, the creatives are very involved," notes Harris. "You don’t get that as much in Europe. It’s very rare that you would get [European] creatives going to a casting callback, for example. They’re more hands off. To be honest, I actually quite like working with the creative team. Assuming you get on well, then I think it’s interesting to work with them so closely. It makes it less of a lonely job."
Of course, stateside directors play much less of a role in postproduction. "I don’t mind that at all," Harris says. "It actually makes you a lot more disciplined when you’re shooting. When [you’re involved in] editing a spot, the temptation is to be a little bit freer during the shoot. You can shoot around the thing a lot more, because you know you’re going to have control over it in the edit. But if you know that ultimately the edit is going to be with the agency and the client, it makes you a lot more specific. You shoot exactly what you need. You make sure every shot is perfect."
Harris’ keen eye may come from his training as an interior designer. Harris received a master’s degree in the subject from London’s Royal College of Art. "I did that for about six years, but when I left, I couldn’t get any work because of the global recession at the beginning of the nineties," he explains. "So I moved into production design, working on little spots and pop promos. I started taking notes on how the directors were doing it, and obviously, everyone would collaborate and offer ideas. I started shooting my own speculative spots on video. Then I bought a Bolex, and it all sort of moved on from there."
He signed with Arden Sutherland-Dodd, London, and began directing ads, most often in France. "My history is more French than English in a way," says Harris, who found the French market to be a challenging training ground. "I think it’s the heritage of filmmaking there—the French tend to put more trust in the director than anywhere else. You get a lot of freedom, but sometimes you don’t get any opinions from people. That can occasionally make you think, ‘Am I doing the right thing or not?’ because ultimately you are the lonely one standing up and presenting your edit to clients. If it fails, then the edit suite can be very quiet."
After four years with Arden Sutherland-Dodd, Harris shifted to Partizan "for a change of scenery." He later signed with now defunct Satellite in order to break into the U.S. market. After Satellite folded, former head of sales Brian Carmody set up Smuggler with Harris and director Brian Beletic on board, as well as executive producer Patrick Milling Smith, who has produced a number of Harris’ European spots. (Harris recently signed with Stink, London for U.K. representation.) "We’d gotten phone calls from a lot of companies at the time, because everyone was picking at the bones of Satellite," Harris remembers. "But we decided to put this company together instead. We all know and trust one another. It’s good to work with people that you are friends with as well."
Content with his representation, Harris would like to keep directing spots well into the future. "I’m going to surprise you," he states. "I have no feature film in development, I’m not working on a script and I don’t have any intention to. I don’t think I have the attention span actually. I’m very happy with the thirty-second format. Even promos are too long for me."
