Traditionally, directors who work on both sides of the Atlantic tend to say the same things about directing spots in the U.K.: creative there really pushes the envelope; directors are heavily involved in the cutting process; directors have more freedom than in the U.S. But Malcolm Venville–who is represented by bicoastal Anonymous Content in the U.S., and maintains his own London production company, Therapy Films–thinks that things have changed. “I’m finding that the U.K. market has gone a little awry,” says Venville. The well-known spotmaker, who is now based in Los Angeles and is directing mostly U.S. markets ads, says U.K. creative has declined of late. “[The U.K. market has] become like what America used to be like in the ’90s, which was very client-led and very constricting.”
He’s noticed an upswing in the creative from U.S. ad shops. “The agencies that appeal to me are doing really exciting work,” he says, citing Wieden + Kennedy (W+K), Portland, Ore., and Crispin, Porter + Bogusky (CP+B), Miami. “In London, it’s gone very stale.”
Some of Venville’s recent U.S. work includes Nike’s “FC USA,” out of W+K The spot opens with a series of aerial images of soccer fields accompanied by a radio broadcaster’s rant against the sport. The nasty remarks include lines such as “Real men don’t play soccer” and “Soccer just isn’t important to anyone in this country.” Then we see American kids playing soccer wherever they can–under a freeway overpass, on a patch of dirt, on an outdoor basketball court–that sharply contradict the guy’s mean-spirited words. Later, we see an obviously talented teenager–soccer prodigy Freddy Adu–playing alone at night on a real soccer field, followed by shots of the U.S. national team, and a match taking place in a stadium filled with a roaring crowd.
Venville points out that about 18 million American kids play soccer. “They wanted to get that sense of scale and dimension into the spot–the diversity and the range of soccer in America,” he explains. “I think the idea was: where people are gathered, soccer is played. They were going to contrast it with a commentator, Jim Rome, who particularly hates soccer.”
Rome actually agreed to be in the spot but changed his mind, and an actor was eventually used in his place. Venville feels that the ad actually benefited from the change. “The spot improved a little because it became less about Rome’s animosity and more about representing soccer,” he says.
One challenge Venville faced was “finding kids who could play but who weren’t going to college and were eligible,” he says, referring to collegiate rules that prohibit amateur athletes from appearing in ads. Venville says that another challenge was finding locations in L.A. “that were diverse–that looked like New England or Kansas.” Except for the stadium footage, which was shot in Chicago at a match between the U.S. and U.K. national teams, the spot was filmed entirely in the Los Angeles area.
“FC USA” came on the heels of another Nike project, six ads promoting the shoe and apparel maker’s nikeID.com, a site where shoppers can customize products with colors of their own choosing. In contrast to the broad sweep of “FC USA,” these spots are intimate and spare. “Orange and Green” is a case in point. The :15 opens with a head-and-shoulders shot of a shirtless boy in profile who turns toward the camera, and then closes his eyes. Cut to a close-up of the boy’s heavily freckled face as he opens his eyes to reveal striking green orbs. Text appears that reads: “Orange + Green. nikeID.com.”
“Nike ID is a dream brief for a commercial director because [the ads] are very abstract and open,” says Venville. “[They’re] simply about identity, which by its very nature is diverse. The agency was very free with me, which is rare these days [and] we had no money–no money usually means freedom to create.” (Other ads in the package include “ID Imagination” and “ID Treasure.”)
Venville used the Viper, a high definition camera, for the ads. He says the discreet nature of the digital device affected the performances. “That meant I could shoot as much as I wanted and get all kinds of performances,” he relates, “without dealing with re-loading film and [without] the noise and presence of the movie camera. I got some different performances because of the silence of the Vipercam. [The actors] were very open to me–just allowing things to happen in front of he camera in a very spontaneous way.”
Still Shot
Before becoming a spot director in the early ’90s, Venville was a still photographer. He has continued to work in the medium, and in 2003, a monograph of his still work, called Layers, was published by Thames & Hudson. Lately, Venville has been spending time in Mexico City shooting photographs for an upcoming book on luchas libres, or masked Mexican wrestlers. In addition, he’s working on a feature, Texas Lullaby, which he describes as a black comedic adaptation of Hamlet that’s set in Texas. And he also recently completed a Toyota Prius spot out of Saatchi & Saatchi LA, Torrance, Calif., and a package of Amstel Beer ads via Publicis, New York.
When it comes to spotmaking, it’s clear that Venville wants to keep stretching out, when he says, “I’m finding myself wanting to do comedy. I want to get away from vignette-based spots and move on to comedy because it’s a challenge.”