This spring’s crop of new directing talent has a lot in common. Of eight directors—four solo acts and two teams—all but one moved into directing from the agency side. But they are also all unique. David Gordon Green, the lone non-agency helmer, is a wunderkind, having directed three feature films before his 29th birthday. Joe Cole and Paul Roy—a.k.a. Cole & Roy—were agency producers. Steven Diller’s background was in video art installations before he started freelancing for various agencies. Josh Miller broke into agency work as a chauffeur. Richard Overall and Simon McQuoid—Overall & McQuoid—met in their native Australia before coming to the U.S. as a creative team. And what more can one say about James Rouse than that he may be the first commercial director to build an ad campaign around sex and the Summer Olympics.
Cole & Roy
There’s nothing unusual anymore about a couple of ad agency folks moving into directing as a team—it’s natural for creatives to stay together if they decide to switch to helming. But what’s a little unusual about Joe Cole and Paul Roy, who met at McCann-Erickson, New York, and shifted to full-time directing late last year at bicoastal RAW/ Progressive Films, is that they were producers, not creatives.
They didn’t work in tandem at the agency, but, as Roy notes, their interests matched. "The closer we got as friends, the more the idea came to us about working together," he states. "We put some spec work together to give it a shot. And in the process, we took the opportunity to make a short film for the Kristin Lee shoe line."
An excerpt from the film is on the Cole & Roy reel under the name "Choices," and like the other spots the pair has directed, "Choices" is a cinematic piece of visual storytelling without dialogue. "Visual storytelling, performance-driven stuff is what we like to work on," Roy says. "But we’re definitely open to working on dialogue. That’ll come as we get boards that have more dialogue in them."
"We see ourselves moving more to dialogue, but we feel strongly about a cinematic look and visual storytelling," agrees Cole. "If we do comedy, it’s got to be dry comedy, not too much over-the-top stuff."
Visuals and dry comedy are evident in their first two post-McCann spots, "Mildred" and "Janie," which they did for Fresh≈, a light bulb that also gets rid of odors. Aunt Mildred is an aging chain smoker who fouls up the air in the house, and little Janie is a finicky eater who successfully hides her meat loaf under the sofa. Both stories are told in a cinematic style without dialogue, until a voiceover at the conclusion explains the air-freshening benefits of the Fresh≈ bulb.
Cole is originally from Cleveland and worked at Comedy Central before joining McCann-Erickson, while Roy, a native of Bangor, Maine, worked in the promo division of MTV, and J. Walter Thompson, New York, before shifting over to McCann-Erickson.
Being close to the production process at a major agency gave Cole and Roy insights into the business, from dealing with clients to observing top directors in action. "We’ve worked with a lot of great directors," Cole says. "One of the obvious things that led us to directing is our experience with the issues a director has to deal with—[working] with clients, knowing what’s going to come up, being able to adjust to their needs and at the same time being able to push for what needs to get done creatively. We got to see how directors handle things in good and bad ways, creatively, politically, all around. That experience was unmatched."
Their style so far puts a heavy emphasis on music, something they pay a great deal of attention to. "Joe and I feel very strongly about the role that music plays in spots," Roy says, "especially spots that are into visual storytelling rather than dialogue. We really work hard on finding appropriate tracks for it. Big Foote Music [in New York] did a great job on the Fresh≈ stuff. A good piece of music can make or break a spot."
The team recently completed two currently airing spots for Rock Green Light, a low-carb beer from Rolling Rock. The work was done out of McCann Tag, New York, a unit of McCann-Erickson. More vignettes than storytelling, the spots—"After You" and "Choices"—open with a close-up of a big, manly arm pounding down a bottle of Rock Green Light before cutting to a droll bar scene, with a voiceover touting the benefits of Rock Green Light.
For now, the team is looking at boards and scripts and planning the future. "We’re trying to explore every aspect of the medium," Cole says. "We both have a love of filmmaking. The commercial aspect is a lot of fun and it’s what we gravitated toward first and foremost, but we’re definitely interested in features."
Steven Diller
Although Steven Diller came to directing with an agency background, the trip has been a somewhat unusual one. Growing up in Eugene, Ore., Diller’s family later on moved a lot between Europe and the U.S. This led to Diller studying art at such varied locations as Colorado College, Colorado Springs; Portland State University, Ore.; and the KunstAkademie of Salzburg, Austria.
A student of painting and sculpture, Diller gravitated to video installations. "That’s how I got into advertising," he says. "I did some video installations at Butters Gallery in Portland, got pulled into Wieden+ Kennedy, [Portland], to do some consulting on some video stuff, and just kind of got sucked into advertising for the next four years."
He remained a freelancer, moving on to TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles; Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners, New York; and McCann-Erickson, Zurich, all the time continuing to do his video art. "McCann offered me the opportunity to be a working creative director for a year until they found someone permanent," Diller recalls. "I said the only way I would do it was if I could direct my own work, and that’s how I built my reel."
About a year and a half ago, he signed with Radke Films, Toronto for Canadian representation. He later signed with Omaha Pictures, Santa Monica. Last year, Diller was selected for the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase, presented at the ’03 Cannes International Advertising Festival.
"Welder" and "Meter Maid," two spots that Diller directed for micro_skills, a San Diego-based IT certification school, out of agencies Wexley School For Girls, Seattle, and Nerve, Portland, highlight his humor skills. The spots use the high concept of a mobile construction crane lifting people out of boring jobs, while an offbeat voiceover explains how they can earn more money—and have happier lives—in the information technology field. Omaha and Radke produced the package.
Diller finds that in directing, he calls on a variety of past experiences and references. "It brings all my passions together and somehow it all makes sense," he says. "I got into video installations simply from seeing so many. I was an early fan of some of the artists doing it years ago, people like Tony Oursler and Bill Viola. There was always a narrative [in their work]. All my video stuff was basically telling stories."
His agency time gave him an appreciation of that aspect of directing. "I’m definitely cognizant of how hard it is to sell a great idea, and how much work creatives put into it before the board gets to you," he says. "They’re approaching you for a fresh point of view."
A fresh point of view is what Diller seeks to deliver. "What the directors I admire have in common is that uncompromising point of view," he states. "Everything they do, they make their own somehow. You see so much stuff nowadays that feels very derivative. The ones that really stand out, like Spike Jonze [of bicoastal/international Morton Jankel Zander], everything they do is unique."
Diller’s current project is a campaign for Terra Boots, a Spanish company, for agency For A Good Cause, Toronto; Radke will produce. "I’m involved in the creative process, and I think that’s going to be a chance to do something really interesting," Diller says.
But that’s not all. He’s prepping an art show and developing a short film project with Omaha. The film is based on "Safety Man," a short story from Dan Chaon’s Among the Missing collection. "I read this book and fell in love with it," Diller says. "I approached Omaha and they said, ‘Let’s do it.’ It’s an emotional story, but with a real dark, comedic sensibility. We’re going to shoot in the spring. It’s just for the love of art."
David Gordon
Green
There aren’t a lot of emerging commercial directors who can bring forth a reel containing an interview with Charlie Rose on PBS, a rave blurb from movie critic Roger Ebert and trailers for two feature films he wrote and directed. But at age 28, director David Gordon Green already has three feature films to his credit, as well as two spots in the widely praised anti-smoking "Truth" campaign from the American Legacy Foundation (ALF). The spots—"Replacement Smokers" and "Survey"—were done out of Arnold Worldwide, Boston, and Crispin Porter+Bogusky, Miami; the two agencies share lead status on the ALF account.
The two spots are a part of the "Connect Truth" theme, which depicts the big picture effects of smoking, and the chain of events from marketing to consumer to illness and death. In both spots, Green—who recently signed with bicoastal/international Chelsea Pictures—takes a decidedly documentary approach. In "Replacement Smokers," he follows a crew setting up hundreds of unclothed mannequins on a New York street. One of the crewmembers explains that the mannequins represent the replacement smokers tobacco companies need to take the place of the ones who died. In "Survey," Green takes to the streets to interview real people who have lost a relative to tobacco-related illnesses.
"With ‘Truth,’ we were really intent on finding people who aren’t your typical commercial pretty-boy spokesman," explains Green, "but more realistically drawn from a person everybody can relate to. People with a unique voice, a distinctive way of speaking, who go into neighborhoods that aren’t in Times Square, [or other] clichéd New York street corners. For the mannequins spot, we were trying to bring a new way to look at an old face, to pepper it with a thousand mannequins and show things in a new way."
Green grew up in Dallas and East Texas, and had an early interest in music and photography. "I had still and Super-8 cameras, and I picked up the saxophone, piano and banjo," he recalls. "They seemed like nice, social, expressive, productive ways to stay out of trouble."
Green says he wasn’t a great student, but when he went to film school at North Carolina School of the Arts, Winston-Salem, things kind of fell into place. "I met a great group of folks who were talented and ambitious, aggressively pursuing this as a realistic career rather than … just a hobby or distraction," he recalls. "At that point, I figured that film was the best way to blend the social, visual and musical elements of what I was interested in."
His debut feature film was George Washington in ’00. The thoughtful film, cast with nonprofessional actors, features a group of African-American children in North Carolina, one of whom shares his name with the founding father and hopes to also become president. It wasn’t a documentary, but much of it was unscripted, Green says. The film was a selection at several film festivals in ’00 and took top awards for dramatic feature, director and actor at the Newport Film Festival. Roger Ebert called it "a bold, stylistic achievement."
In ’03, Green wrote and directed All the Real Girls, a romantic drama starring Zooey Deschanel. A more structured film, it tells the story of a girl who falls for her brother’s best friend, putting a strain on all their relationships.
It’s important to Green to put his unique stamp on all his work. "There are a million people who can paint by numbers and do what’s been done—and that’s fine. It pays the bills for them," he says. "I want to come up with new ways to show something, go out on the edge a little bit, take a risk. I get sick of seeing clichés in films or TV commercials or books." He is currently working on an offbeat, urban-flavored spot out of agency Powell, New York, for Rheingold Beer, a local Northeast brand that is being revived.
If Green has been pigeonholed a bit as a quirky, independent film director, he is looking to his next film project to dispel this perception. "I just finished a movie that’s got a lot of action and car chases and stunt work and blood and guts," he says, referring to Undertow, which was written by Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line; Days of Heaven), who is also producing. "It’ll be interesting when that comes out to see if the impression of me within the industry evolves somewhat," Green says. "Hopefully, it evolves to the point several years from now where I’m a man of many tricks and trades. I would love to have the opportunity to do some funny stuff. I would love not to be stereotyped as a southern, dramatic, poetic, lyrical filmmaker, but a guy who can make you laugh your ass off."
Josh Miller
"Josh Miller, copywriter/chauffeur." That was how fledgling director Miller’s first business card—at Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners—read back in ’92, after Miller went East (he’s a native of Los Angeles and attended the University of Oregon, Eugene).
While pursuing a degree in journalism and English, Miller discovered copywriting. "I loved the idea of being creative," he says. "I moved to New York, looking to get into advertising as a writer. I started as [co-chairman/chief creative officer] Richard Kirshenbaum’s chauffeur."
From there, Miller moved on to Ammirati & Puris (now Lowe, New York) and Cliff Freeman and Partners, New York, and later Team One Advertising, El Segundo, Calif., where he was a creative director. "I realized in advertising that I was most happy when I was producing something, working closely with the directors on a campaign that I wrote," he says. "I’ve always been a visual person, even as a writer at an agency. I always thought I was sort of an art director in a writer’s body. It was just a natural next step, being a director."
He got encouragement from directors such as Doug Nichol of bicoastal/international Partizan; Tony Kaye, now with bicoastal Supply & Demand; and Jeff Preiss of bicoastal Epoch Films. "Sometimes I feel like I should’ve made the jump to directing years ago," Miller reflects. "What stopped me was the pervasive question, ‘Is there room in the world for another ad-guy-turned-director?’ Now I know the answer: ‘Sure, as long as it’s me.’ "
Miller signed with bicoastal Transmission@RSA, a satellite of bicoastal RSA USA, using a reel built around spec work and a spot for Benihana’s "Trampoline," which he wrote and directed while freelancing at The Romann Group, New York, to land a spot for the new Schwinn Sting-Ray bicycle. The job came directly from Schwinn’s parent company, Pacific Cycle of Madison, Wis.
"They approached me to work with them conceptually, and to ultimately direct it," Miller says. "They liked the fact that I had a conceptual background, and that I’m directing with this top-notch company, RSA."
The Sting-Ray is a revival of an old brand that looks like what the folks at Discovery Channel’s American Chopper might do to a kid’s bike, and Miller describes the spot, "United We Ride," as "a young boy’s road movie—Easy Rider for kids, almost." The commercial is set to break in April.
On the heels of that spot, Miller was awarded a job for Song Airlines, Delta’s budget-priced, no-frills carrier. Miller’s reel contains a variety of work, including two spec spots for the Animal Planet cable channel—"Office" and "Subway"—that don’t show any animals. Instead, they focus on the humdrum lives of humans. "I love to start with an idea, [like] showing how people’s lives can be affected by animals," Miller shares.
But a spec spot for Mini Cooper uses an animal prominently. "Duck" tells the story of a young man who adopts a duck in New York and drives him South for the winter in his Mini Cooper. "It’s this completely absurd thing: a duck shows up at this guy’s apartment," says Miller. "But [the ad] is treating [the situation] with respect and not making it overtly humorous."
Miller says he gets inspiration from many places, including still photography and the films of Terrence Malick. "The directors I truly respect are the ones who can do a range of things," he says. "I don’t profess to be an intensely visually-oriented director. I’m visual, but I use it to be narrative. I like intelligent, subtle humor. There’s so much humor in real life, all you need to do is put a camera on it. You’re going to find that it’s funny."
Overall & McQuoid
Richard Overall and Simon McQuoid have been working together for about 12 years, first at ad agencies in their native Australia as a copywriter and art director, respectively. They came to the United States in ’95 to work as a creative team at such agencies as Clarity Coverdale Fury Advertising, Minneapolis; Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos, Boston; and TBWA/ Chiat/Day, New York, before signing last year as directing team Overall & McQuoid with bicoastal Go Film.
Overall & McQuoid started directing at TBWA/Chiat/Day. The pair’s first effort was a viral e-mail campaign they dreamed up for Absolut Vodka. "There wasn’t a brief that came in saying, ‘Do some stuff for the Internet,’ " McQuoid relates. "We just thought, ‘Let’s do it.’ Late one night, we shot four or five [ads] in our office on a video camera with a bit of black foam core and a bottle. We cut it on iMovie and then we presented that to everyone at the agency and they really liked it. They got a bit of money out of Absolut to make them at a higher level."
The pair wound up doing about 15 "moving print ads," as they call their creations. "They were little QuickTime movies," Overall explains. "It gave us our first crack at actually directing something."
Overall & McQuoid then applied the Absolut lesson to another agency client. "Samsonite was just floating around," Overall remembers. "It seemed like a wasted opportunity."
The agency was planning a print ad for a piece of airline carry-on luggage with wheels on the short side of the carrier, allowing it to be pulled through narrow aisles and tight spots. "We said, ‘We can get you on TV. We’ll save you money. We’ll direct it ourselves,’ " Overall recounts.
And that’s what they did. The resulting spot was called "Side Roller," for which Overall & McQuoid served as both directors and creative directors. They did the same with "Human Nature," also for Samsonite, and "Laundry" for adidas.
The transition to full-time directing wasn’t particularly traumatic, the directors say. They had a relationship with Robert Wherry, partner/executive producer at Go Film, which dated back to their days at Hill, Holliday. "We’ve been fortunate enough to work with some really great directors," Overall notes. "We’ve worked with Noam Murro [of Biscuit Filmworks, Los Angeles] and David Kellogg [of bicoastal Anonymous Content]. They were really open and encouraging to us."
A job with director Brent Harris, then with Go (he’s now with Transmission@RSA), brought the pair back in touch with Wherry. "We started talking, and it all just kind of fell into place," McQuoid remembers.
Their modus operandi as directors is one of sharing responsibilities collaboratively. "It’s the same way we worked as creatives," Overall says. "Simon would often come up with headlines, and I would make visual suggestions. We both really love the craft of communicating. It’s so rare that we disagree that we really don’t know how to handle disagreement. It’s quite amazing. It’s always been like that. We’re great friends. We laugh at the same jokes again and again."
Humor is a big part of their work, but they say they try to hone in on ideas first. "Whenever a script comes through, we really go straight to the idea and say, ‘Is the idea really strong?’ " McQuoid shares. "Everything gets built from there. We have a natural tendency to go for stuff with a sense of humor, but we don’t like wacky humor. We love our shots to be as graphic as possible without looking too affected, too tricky. We love our film to look beautiful, while maintaining humor."
They are currently working on a job for an undisclosed client out of France that is being shot in South Africa for international distribution. They also recently finished "Equity Mate," an Australian job for Commonwealth Bank out of 360 Degree Partnership, Sydney.
The pair plans to concentrate on commercialwork for now, but have an eye on other kinds of filmmaking. "There’s a short film festival in Australia called Tropfest," Overall says. "We have given ourselves a mission of getting something into that next year. We certainly have a desire to explore life beyond the thirty-second format."
James Rouse
So far, director James Rouse may be too risqué for prime time. One of four helmers on the roster at recently opened production company Thomas Winter Cooke (TWC), Santa Monica, newcomer Rouse has created serious buzz and a lot of laughs with his three Internet spots for Trojan condoms (www.trojangames. com), via agency Media Therapy, London.
The spots—"Weightlifting," "Judo Semi-Finale" and "Precision Vaulting"—feature faux Olympic-style athletic events in which couples perform feats of carnal athleticism.
The campaign, part of the launch of the Trojan brand in the U.K., was produced by The Viral Factory, London, a company that specializes in viral marketing via the Internet. In addition to directing the spots, Rouse was part of the creative team on all levels. While the spots are memorable and funny because of the sheer surprise of seeing couples in such compromising positions, what really makes them stand out is the authenticity and attention to detail Rouse brought to them.
"My job as a director was to make sure that it felt in every way, shape and form like Olympic coverage," Rouse says. "I researched it meticulously, not just how they shoot the events, but what the stadium feels like. When we looked at Olympic coverage, in the background of every event are people just wandering about, going to look at the long jump next door, which has nothing to do with the event you’re looking at. There’s something quite nice that in ‘Precision Vaulting’ for example, you’ve got a woman landing on a guy’s erect cock, which is quite an athletic feat, and you’ve got people in the background who are paying no attention whatsoever."
Adding to the authenticity for the British audience is the announcer, Stuart Storey, who has done commentary for the BBC on seven Olympic Games and a number of other events. "He is the voice of Olympic coverage in the U.K.," says Rouse. "I think he adds a lot of gravitas for someone watching in the U.K. It was very important for us to capture and deliver it completely straight—not give a nod and a wink to the fact that it’s a bit sexual. There’s no smirk." The spots recently took a Gold—for "Precision Vaulting"—and two Silvers at the British Television Advertising Awards in the virals category.
Rouse was born in the U.K. and attended London’s Middlesex University before moving over to the School of Communication Arts, London, to study copywriting and art direction. He worked at several London ad agencies and broke into broadcast after joining Euro RSCG Wnek Gosper, London, in ’95, followed by stints at London shops such as DDB and TBWA. Then he was a creative director at Corsellis Montford Interactive, a London interactive design firm. In ’97, he founded now defunct Soup Design, and concurrently served as head of film and creative director at The Gathering, London, a branding agency. He made the move to directing two years ago, and just signed with Outsider, London, for U.K. representation.
"I’ve always liked comedy and I’ve always wanted to produce good comedy," he says about his move to directing. "I had been frustrated sometimes by things that I felt hadn’t worked as well as they could have."
Rouse remains most interested in comedy, but he isn’t averse to trying other things. "I love a challenge, and whenever I’m given something that kind of pushes me further, it always makes me work that much harder," he says. "I’ve just done some spots for a computer game that involves a guy being chased by zombies and having his body ripped apart, which kind of isn’t funny."
The work, for Internet use, has yet to break. Rouse doesn’t look to other directors for inspiration or influence, but he does mention John West Salmon’s "Bear Fight," directed by Daniel Kleinman of Spectre (now Large), London, out of Leo Burnett, London, as a spot he enjoyed. "The work I admire is probably the stuff that makes me laugh," he says.
Although he’d like to do a comedy feature some day, Rouse says it’s not a driving ambition. "What is important to me is that I go on making funny scripts," he says. "A feature film is not my end goal, not what drives me every morning. What does drive me every morning is making great scripts and making funny scripts."
