By Christine Champagne

The third time was the charm for director Noam Murro of Biscuit Filmworks, Los Angeles. After being nominated for the best commercial director award each of the last three years by the Directors Guild of America (DGA), he won the honor on the strength of three spots: Starbucks’ “Glen,” which was created by Fallon, New York; “Carry” for adidas out of TBWA/Chiat/Day, San Francisco; and eBay’s “Toy Boat” for Goodby Silverstein & Partners (GS&P), San Francisco.

Asked how he felt about the DGA win, Murro reflects, “I am grateful. I think it’s fantastic. You are judged by your peers, and it’s the greatest compliment.”

    Murro is no stranger to winning awards. Since he began directing in 1994 while he was an associate creative director at the now defunct advertising agency Goldsmith Jeffrey, Murro’s work has garnered Gold Lions at the Cannes International Advertising Festival, Clios, ANDYs and Addys among other prizes as well as honors at the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Show. In fact, Murro earned the most honors at last year’s AICP Show–picking up a total of eight. He also lectured at the event.

Looking back on the numerous award-winning assignments he has tackled in recent years, Murro shares, “I’m in a fortunate position to do good work, and lot of good work has come my way. I’m not trying to be patronizing, but I do believe that each one of them is my baby, and I do my best for all of them. They’re all dear to me in different ways.”

 

A SPOT IS BORN

Of course, every great spot grows out of a good idea, “or at the least the seed of a good idea,” Murro clarifies.

And those good ideas come from the agency creatives Murro works with, the director says, stressing, “The great things that we are able to do together start with their great work.”

However, as the agency creatives who work with Murro know, he has a way of finessing even the best idea they’ve come up with–making it even better. Case in point: Murro helped shape the structure of a series of spots, including “Seal” for Orbitz, which was a SHOOT Top Spot of the Week (4/30/04, p. 10), that he directed last year out of Young & Rubicam (Y&R), Chicago. The spots found adults playing hide-and-seek with a seal, a Hawaiian fire dancer and Las Vegas showgirls to illustrate the travel Web site’s enhanced search functionality.

At the time, Y&R creative director/copywriter Ken Erke related that it was Murro’s idea to open each spot with the seeker counting, “four, five, six, seven–” before calling out “Ready or not. Here I come!”

“Not everyone was going to start with the [seeker] counting, but he said that in order to know it’s a very easy process [to find information on Orbitz], you have to show the beginning and the end,” noted Erke. “Without showing the counting, you don’t know how long ago the search started. But if you show the counting, and then the ultimate quick find, the metaphor is stronger, and he was right.”

 

GOOD HUMOR MAN

In addition to having an innate sense of how best to structure a spot, Murro also has a knack for comedy. This ability is evident in everything from his quietly silly Orbitz spots to “Watercooler,” the superbly dry promo he directed for HBO last year that depicted how the watercooler business was saved by HBO churning out so many “watercooler shows,” sparking workplace discussion around watercoolers and the drinking of water from watercoolers.

FYI: Murro pitched the idea for “Watercooler” directly to HBO and credited Jamie Barrett and Mark Wenneker as creative directors on the project. Barrett and Wenneker are with GS&P as associate partner/creative director/copywriter and art director, respectively, but it should be noted that “Watercooler” was a freelance project not done under the aegis of GS&P.

A promo that ran about one-and-a-half minutes, “Watercooler” certainly showed that Murro is capable of working beyond the boundaries imposed by the :30 spot. Might he be open to expanding his directorial repertoire to include the ever-increasing number of branded entertainment projects out there?

“Sure,” the director says. “Listen, it’s all about content. It always has been. It always will be. If the content is good, they’ll find a way to broadcast it. If the content is bad, they probably won’t find a way to broadcast it. It’s all about the quality of what’s inside of it, and that’s what I am interested in.”

By the way, will Murro ever direct a feature film? “Yeah, I think that’s in the wings. We’re almost there,” he cryptically states, declining to elaborate. At one point, Murro had been attached to direct the recently released The Ring 2, but that deal ended when he and DreamWorks/SKG reportedly decided mutually to part ways.

Back to the previously discussed tenor of his spot work, Murro isn’t all laughs, of course. He is equally renowned for his ability to mine emotion from a story as illustrated by “The Noses.” Created by Fallon, Minneapolis, the spot combined Murro’s comedic skills with his more sensitive side, depicting a family with bulbous–not to mention noisy–noses. While being saddled with huge noses caused difficulties for each member of the family, their noses also allowed them to make beautiful music together during family vacations at Holiday Inn.

Then there was the strictly sentimental eBay spot “Toy Boat,” which tells the touching story of a boy losing a beloved toy boat to the sea only to reclaim it years later as an adult after spotting it on eBay.

More recently, Murro directed a wonderfully warm spot for DirecTV titled “Forward” out of BBDO New York that linked the evolution of television from its birth to the present with the life of an average guy, presenting the various stages of his life accompanied by the sights and sounds from classic television series and events of the respective eras.

“The work has been diverse and interesting,” Murro acknowledges. “I am grateful for that, and I think I am continuing to evolve. The true satisfaction of this whole profession is the ability to keep evolving. I don’t want to do the same think twice. I am adamant about that.”

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