By SUSAN LIN
Code Films, a New York-based spot production house, has opened with director Paul Guliner and executive producer Mark Leo. The parent company for the new venture is Napoleon Art and Production, New York.
In securing Guliner, former agency producer Leo has positioned Code Films in a niche distinctly different from that of Napoleon, which is known in the more modestly budgeted, test spot market. Leo has assembled a reel of commercials that highlights Guliner’s prowess in storytelling and dialogue. The spots include "Rowboat" for Purina One via Lowe & Partners/SMS (now Lowe Lintas & Partners), New York, where a man is rowing a boat with his dog as company; "Emergency" for the McAllen Heart Center, via Givner & Chiles, New York; and "Zero Defects" for technology company NEC, via Dentsu Communications, New York.
Leo and Guliner share the same vision for the company—simply that high quality work will generate more opportunities, most notably repeat business. "We want people to love [the spots we do], and come back," said Guliner. "That’s really what we’re about."
As an agency producer, Leo had been long acquainted with Guliner’s work before meeting him. "Paul’s reputation sort of precedes him, if you know the business," Leo said.
In his early discussions about Code Films with creative director Marty Napoleon of Napoleon Art and Production, Leo considered Guliner to be the perfect director to bring on board. Guliner had spotwork that "I would be able to sell and get work from, "Leo said. "Not to treat Paul like a brand, but we would like to capitalize on his good name and reputation." After a few months of working out logistics, Leo and Guliner have become partners with Napoleon in the venture.
Before Code Films, Leo spent three years as a producer with sales responsibilities at DJM, New York, a live-action production/editorial company. Before DJM, he was a producer at production house Charlex, New York. His agency roosts earlier in his career include four years as producer at Kenyon & Eckhardt (now Bozell), New York, as well as three years also as producer at Dancer Fitzgerald Sample (now Saatchi & Saatchi), New York.
Guliner is also a veteran of the spot industry. For the past three years, the director had been repped by Big Picture Films, New York, and in the eight years prior to that, he directed via Crossroads Films, bicoastal and Chicago. Guliner first made the jump into directing while serving as creative director at now defunct agency Wells Rich Greene BDDP, New York.
For :30 storytelling, Guliner puts most of his efforts into casting, the element he considers "critical" to the genre. "If you’ve casted correctly, [directing] the performance should be easy because the actors are helping you make the commercial distinctive," Guliner said.
One of the aforementioned spots on his reel, "Emergency," takes the viewer through a woman’s emotional experience as her husband has a heart attack and is treated at a hospital. The commercial dexterously avoids heavy-handedness in its treatment of the difficult subject matter.
Guliner’s "Happy Together," a spoof commercial scheduled to air on Saturday Night Live in the spring, is also a performance-driven story, although in this one a knife-wielding man is chasing his wife through a house. In the end, she is able to pacify him with something to eat. The performance is clearly exaggerated, bringing out a stark humor in the spot.
"People are inundated with a lot of quick images, and you’ve got to do something that sticks. After the commercial is over, [the spot] should resonate," Guliner said.
Once the company is grounded, Leo said that Code Films will consider adding more directors, as well as Midwest and West Coast representation.
Tim Burton Discusses His Dread Of AI As An Exhibition of His Work Opens In London
The imagination of Tim Burton has produced ghosts and ghouls, Martians, monsters and misfits — all on display at an exhibition that is opening in London just in time for Halloween.
But you know what really scares him? Artificial intelligence.
Burton said Wednesday that seeing a website that had used AI to blend his drawings with Disney characters "really disturbed me."
"It wasn't an intellectual thought — it was just an internal, visceral feeling," Burton told reporters during a preview of "The World of Tim Burton" exhibition at London's Design Museum. "I looked at those things and I thought, 'Some of these are pretty good.' … (But) it gave me a weird sort of scary feeling inside."
Burton said he thinks AI is unstoppable, because "once you can do it, people will do it." But he scoffed when asked if he'd use the technology in this work.
"To take over the world?" he laughed.
The exhibition reveals Burton to be an analogue artist, who started off as a child in the 1960s experimenting with paints and colored pencils in his suburban Californian home.
"I wasn't, early on, a very verbal person," Burton said. "Drawing was a way of expressing myself."
Decades later, after films including "Edward Scissorhands," "Batman," "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "Beetlejuice," his ideas still begin with drawing. The exhibition includes 600 items from movie studio collections and Burton's personal archive, and traces those ideas as they advance from sketches through collaboration with set, production and costume designers on the way to the big screen.
London is the exhibition's final stop on a decade-long tour of 14 cities in 11 countries. It has been reconfigured and expanded with 90 new objects for its run in... Read More