Director Corbett Scott, who made a major splash via Group101Spots–a program that helped advance his transition from agency creative to commercial helmer–has come aboard A Band Apart, Los Angeles. This marks the first time he’s had exclusive production house representation.
Scott was one of seven select directors whose work was showcased at this year’s Group101Spots event in Los Angeles (SHOOT, 6/10, p. 7). The Group101 program enables directors to showcase their talents through the production of spec spots. His recent spec work for Altoids and the Outdoor Life Network (OLN) shows a finely honed sense of humor that can skew towards the offbeat.
The Altoids piece, produced via Group101, is set inside a curious test product facility where a jockey sits atop a saw horse while another man looks on with worry from the far corner. An obscure pink band runs across the room from the man to the horse and on cue the jockey begins beating the wooden animal with the band as if it were a whip. The pink band turns out to be the other guy’s impossibly long tongue and the “test” is designed to prepare him for the biting taste of Altoids.
“I tend to gravitate toward darker material,” said Scott of the spot. “Travis Sorge [Toyota’s “Girlfriend”] wrote it for me after seeing my OLN spots, but even by my standards, it scared the shit out of me. At the same time, I like to see what I can get away with–how far I can push things. On that level it appealed to me.”
Scott added, “The challenge was determining the boundaries. It was so outlandish and surreal. It could have easily gotten away from me and been too over the top. And of course I wanted to honor the brand. So it was an incredible exercise in restraint.”
The earlier alluded to OLN spots, which promoted the network’s Tour de France coverage, exhibited a similar brand of edgy humor. “Zimbabwe” shows a pair of lions feasting on what is gradually revealed to be a cyclist’s corpse. A graphic explains that there are good reasons why the Tour isn’t held in Africa. “Bronx” is along the same lines as a cyclist tries to regain his bike from a fleet-footed thief.
Scott’s work caught the eye of A Band Apart managing director Jeff Armstrong, who cited the helmer’s mix of agency experience and prowess in storytelling and filmmaking. A product of Atlanta’s Portfolio Center, Scott began his career with North Carolina ad agency Price/McNabb where, working under creative director John Boone, he picked up a Gold Pencil at the One Show during his first year. The copywriter then held a staff post at Earle Palmer Brown, Richmond, Va., and then went on to freelance at such Southern California shops as TBWA/Chiat/Day (Energizer, Taco Bell, Air Touch), davidandgoliath (Kia) and Team One (Lexus).
Also among Scott’s recent endeavors is a comedic commercial promoting The Nightmare Before Xmas video game for Disney’s BVG, out of agency Kovel/Fuller, Culver City, Calif. That job was run through Burbank-based Subliminal, a production company founded by executive producer/director Dina Mande and exec producer Steven Gould (SHOOT, 9/9 p. 1). Scott wasn’t part of the Subliminal roster but did the ad via the company based on his ties to Mande, who is founder of the Group101Spots program. Gould is a production advisor to Group101.
