Harvesting The Crop of Up-And-Coming Directors
By Bill Dunlap
This spring’s five directors picked by SHOOT as up and comers in the commercial world arrived from a number of different directions. Two came through MTV’s “college of production knowledge,” one was an agency creative, another started in the music video arena, and the fifth came from a fine arts background.
Whatever their similarities and differences, all five are promising commercial directors who are making their mark in the field.
AARON STOLLER
For about as long as he can remember, Aaron Stoller has wanted to do MTV commercials. “I loved the landscape of the channel,” he says. “It was incredibly funny to me. All the stuff I did in college had that tone.”
College was the University of Missouri at Columbia and his work in the Communications School there landed him an internship in 1997 at MTV’s On Air Promotions department in New York, which turned into a full-time job and subsequently landed him earlier this year at Backyard Productions in Venice, Calif.
While his reel is still heavy with MTV spots, he’s already gotten busy with Backyard. “I did some Pringles stuff that was a lot of fun,” he says, “and I just finished Burger King with Crispin [Porter + Bogusky, Miami] and I did a Kingsford Charcoal spot with DDB San Francisco.”
Stoller credits his MTV experience with much of his success. “It’s like the ultimate grad school,” he says. “You do it all. You write it, produce it and direct it. You’re in the marketing world as well–you’re trying to strategize and figure out new angles for the channel and new ways to promote and sell this big brand.”
And MTV provided the opportunity for a young director to work with top celebrities. “All the celebrity experience through MTV has been a blast,” he says. “When I shot with Tom Cruise, for an MTV Movie Awards spot, “I thought, how am I going to approach it. At one point, he put his arm on my shoulder and said, ‘You tell me what’s funny, because I don’t know what’s funny.’ He made you feel confident.”
Stoller likes funny, especially the kind that appeals to the MTV Generation. “I think I’ve learned really well how to talk to kids,” he says, “how to shoot cool stuff without it being forced. It’s a delicate thing. I love casting. One of my trademarks is finding the obscure and shopping for freakers but getting people who aren’t just bizarre for the sake of being bizarre.”
The decision to move into commercial directing wasn’t a difficult one for Stoller. “It’s a new challenge. It’s something fresh. I felt I needed to bite something new off. I like working within the parameters of advertising. It’s not just go and make cool stuff. It’s go and make cool stuff within these confines.”
And he has the examples of past MTV directors who have made the transition successfully, including Lisa Rubisch at Bob Industries, Jim Hosking at Partizan, Brian Beletic at Smuggler and Tim Abshire at Backyard.
“When you start looking in the commercial world, you start looking at spots by people you know and your eyes open up and it’s so cool that Tim Abshire did that. Suddenly it becomes accessible. If they made that jump and are doing that really cool stuff, then so can I.”
Stoller is currently trying to get a feature comedy off the ground, but he is open to anything right now. “I’m embracing all platforms,” he says, “making cool stuff, whether it’s for broadcast or the theater or your cell phone. I want to ride this new wave, this new frontier. I want to position myself to provide good content for anything.”
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More