What’s a N.Y. spot bad boy like me doing in a nice place like Austin?
It’s important for any executive producer to support his or her directors outside of the commercial realm and for me that meant following my director Greg Olliver to SXSW for the premiere of his documentary Lemmy The Movie (about Lemmy Kilmister of the heavy metal band Motorhead, co-directed by Olliver and Wes Orshosky). Supporting and extending production services to Greg was a natural decision.
An accomplished editor friend who successfully made the transition from commercials to features several years ago, said, “It’s a miracle every time a feature gets made.” When you hear of all the stories, both of the projects that people are trying to get off the ground, or the stories from successful endeavors, you could make a film about what it took to make that film.
Lemmy was a true labor of love for Greg and Wes. They worked tirelessly for over three years to make this film, and the love shows. They followed Kilmister around the world to capture an entertaining and intimate portrait of this eclectic human being. You need not be a fan of this music to love this film or relate to the human-interest story presented by the filmmakers.
More importantly for the company, the recognition the film festival brings adds value to the director and to our company. In addition, the storytelling experiences directors gain while living and breathing the creation of any long-form feature, but especially documentaries, directly relates to and strengthens their storytelling capabilities for spots. Docs. encompass “moments” of comedy, drama, mystery and human interest and the creation of a point of view through film. It also forces filmmakers to solve an array of technical and artistic challenges within the tightest of budget parameters. The doc “experience” also gives a director the chance to create extensive treatments and further develop a reel.
This is hardly our first time going down this road with our directors. THEM’s roster of directors intentionally (and strategically) includes a number of successful spot storytellers who have created and directed award-winning feature film docs.
Jeff Feurerzeig (The Devil and Daniel Johnston) recently directed content for IBM, Harley Davidson, and Career Builders. Michael Uys (The Good Soldier) directed content for Pfizer and Bristol Meyers Squib, and a campaign for The Department of Homeland Security. For each of those projects, our clients were convinced to work with them based in part because of their documentary-making experience.
Advertising is blending with conventional entertainment in big ways. Thus it’s more important than ever for production companies to nurture a director’s storytelling instincts beyond advertising with financial and marketing support because it will likely pay huge dividends for our advertising clients. Though we have a number of interesting long-form development projects with our directors, the support we can offer to our directors as production partners on their passion projects can go even further toward cementing long-term relationships, growing our talent and expanding our offerings to the ad community at large.
Tony Harding is executive producer/owner of THEM Media Inc., N.Y.
