SHOOT is introducing several new columns over the coming months, at least a couple of which will appear in the slot below that’s normally reserved for "Your Shot." While "Your Shot" will continue to be prevalent in its accustomed space, from time to time for the sake of variety we’ll sprinkle in different fare.
This week, we spice things up with our "Creative Voice" column, which SHOOT unveiled last year. This column can take different forms—a Q&A with a creative director or creative team, a profile of or a bylined piece by a leading agency creative, or a look at notable work and its creative underpinning.
The latter is the case this week, as Kristin Wilcha, senior editor/Special Report, talks to artisans at Young & Rubicam (Y&R), Chicago, about Miller Lite’s "Dominoes," directed by Fredrik Bond of bicoastal/international Morton Jankel Zander (MJZ), and edited by Richard Orrick of The Whitehouse, which has shops in London, New York, Chicago and Santa Monica.
Discussing the genesis of the commercial are creative director/art director Jon Wyville (who is set to join Fallon, Minneapolis, as a group creative director), Y&R’s senior VP/director of broadcast production Matt Bijarchi and agency producer Lee Goldberg.
Similarly, look for new columns that will feature clients, agency heads of production and producers, and advertainment execs to complement our longstanding, ongoing industry coverage of the creative process and its relation to the production, post, visual effects, music and sound design communities.
Additionally, while SHOOT has long chronicled the crossover dynamic whereby spot artisans venture into longform and vice versa, we are now further enhancing that editorial beat with a regular "Crossover" column.
We introduced the column last summer with coverage of filmmakers Sydney Pollack (Out of Africa, Tootsie) and Luis Mandoki (Message in a Bottle, Angel Eyes) each directing an Ad Council spot promoting the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation (SHOOT , 8/15/03, p. 8). Pollack and Mandoki helmed the work via Independent Media, Santa Monica, for Saatchi & Saatchi, New York.
In the Pollack-directed "Halle," for example, actress Halle Berry walks into a chic restaurant accompanied by a couple of African-American girlfriends. The hostess greets the stylish women with an unimpressed sneer before leading them through the main dining room. The hostess then pulls back a drape, revealing a doorway to a "Colored Section," which is identified by a sign. Berry and her friends enter and sit down in a noticeably cut-rate, drab room. A parting voiceover relates, "Imagine what America would be like today if Martin Luther King never had a dream. Help keep the dream alive." The spot was designed to drum up support for a planned Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on The National Mall, in Washington, D.C.
Subsequent "Crossover" installments appeared on SHOOT’s Web site, including details of director Noam Murro’s first feature helming assignment, The Ring 2. Murro was recently nominated for the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award as best commercial director of 2003, the second consecutive year he’s been a nominee. For this Web fare and the "Crossover" column in this week’s print edition, SHOOT tapped into the resources of our sister publication, The Hollywood Reporter (THR).
In the latest "Crossover" installment (see p. 8), THR reporter Borys Kit outlines commercial director Craig Gillespie’s upcoming foray into feature directing with The Whole Pemberton Thing, a dark romantic comedy for Alcon Entertainment, Burbank, Calif. Gillespie, whose spot roost is MJZ, has been nominated twice for the DGA spot honor.
