Finding meaning in advertising
By Millie Takaki
An acclaimed photographer and chronicler of youth culture, Lauren Greenfield has successfully diversified into short and long-form filmmaking. Her latest directorial inroads have been made in commercials via bicoastal/international production house Chelsea Pictures.
But her story is far more involved than making the transition from still shooting to spotmaking. Greenfield changed her views on advertising dramatically as reflected in her first major published work, Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood, released some eight years ago, and her subsequent experience lensing a print campaign for Nike.
Fast Forward examined materialism’s effect on youth. “My first book was critical of advertising and its impact on youth as well as gender,” recalls Greenfield. “But then I did this Nike print ad shoot [for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco] in which girls simply spoke about being themselves and not having to look like the perfect models they see on television.
While that Nike campaign was influential for young people, its importance didn’t fully hit home for Greenfield until she went on two photo journalism assignments, one for The New York Times which called for her to examine what it means to be 13 years old today. That work wound up being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The other assignment took Greenfield to Missouri in order to chronicle a week in the life of an American high school, resulting in a cover shot for Time Magazine.
In both cases, Greenfield had occasion to visit the rooms of teenage girls where on the walls, amidst posters of rock stars and the like, she saw her Nike print ads.
“I think then I fully realized the good that advertising can do–It’s one thing to have your work well received in the professional community, but seeing that Nike work on those bedroom walls meant so much more in terms of meaningfully connecting with people.”
Chelsea
Greenfield’s work also meaningfully connected with Chelsea partners Allison Amon and Lisa Mehling. Fans of Greenfield’s early print work, Amon and Mehling went to the Sundance Film Festival in 2006 to see Thin, a feature which marked Greenfield’s directorial debut and was based on her book of the same title which chronicled four women as they struggled to fight eating disorders. The film further heightened Amon’s and Mehling’s enthusiasm for Greenfield’s prospects in commercialmaking. A couple months after the ’06 Sundance Fest, Chelsea signed Greenfield for exclusive representation as a spot director.
Chelsea’s commitment has yielded recent tangible results. Greenfield directed a U.S. Army short chronicling the lives of soldier’s families and the sacrifices they make at home so that their loved ones can serve our country in Iraq. One version of the short, approximately three-and-a-half minutes in length, is being used internally by the Army, another is playing on the Army website. The ambitious project, for McCann Erickson, New York, marked Greenfield’s first major foray into the ad content arena. She found value in the job, which tapped into her documentary, journalism and people portrait sensibilities.
This gig came just prior to Greenfield returning to Sundance in ’08, this time with kids+money, a 32-minute short that sprung from a 12-minute online video she did for The New York Times. Kids+money was but one of eight documentary shorts accepted into the ’08 Sundance Fest. The film centers on teenagers in Los Angeles discussing money–getting it, spending it and some learning to live without it.
From the outset, Greenfield worked with some noted commercial industry collaborators–spanning both the 12 and 32-minute versions–such as DP David Rush Morrison and editor Adam Parker (of edit house Chrome).
“My thinking more seriously about commercials and being with Chelsea had an impact on how kids+money turned out at Sundance,” relates Greenfield. “The film [produced by Chelsea] is a little more visually styled photographically, the story is very efficiently told.”
Just prior to Sundance, a deal was finalized for HBO to air [the 32-minute] kids+money later this year.
First TV spot
Greenfield has that and another project on-air debut to look forward to this year. At press time she had wrapped her first full-fledged TV commercial, an ad for menopausal drug Estroven out of Young & Rubicam, New York.
The assignment dovetailed with Greenfield’s long running personal project, a book on how aging is changing. She has for some time been photographing men and women who have significant age differences and are romantic couples. Y&R gravitated to Greenfield at first for a print ad promoting Estroven pairing an older woman and a younger man. Greenfield sent the advertising agency several photographs that she thought would be in the spirit of the campaign. Y&R immediately gravitated to one of the photos and wound up embracing it for the print.
The photo also helped to inspire the TV–and inspired Y&R to look to Greenfield to direct the commercial. Greenfield paired with DP Tami Reiker for the spot shoot and again the director found meaning in the work.
“I feel fortunate that my advertising projects thus far have been not only storytelling pieces but stories that are significant for me,” says Greenfield. “The challenge for me is finding meaningful content and I’m discovering that this can be done in advertising.”
As for Reiker, Greenfield says, “I loved working with Tami. She has an amazing eye and helped me do justice to the storyline of a vital 50-year-old woman being with a much younger man.”
Also gratifying was being able to do both the print and TV ends of the campaign. “To have one vision reflected consistently across the print and television represented a wonderful opportunity for me,” relates Greenfield. “That’s the first time I’ve had that experience and I hope I have many more.”
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More