By A SHOOT Staff Report

The mix represented in the fall 2011 installment of SHOOT’s ongoing Up-and-Coming Directors Series includes:
    • A director who’s been recognized in Saatchi & Saatchi’s New Directors Showcase and has recently signed with a new high-profile production house while he continues as a film school student.
    • A helmer of drama and comedy network TV series who just diversified meaningfully into commercials.
    • A filmmaker whose comedic web series has broken new ground for the network that brought us Mad Men.
    • A collective that has garnered its first national representation with its members spanning disciplines ranging from live action to animation, web design, editorial, motion graphics and VFX.
    • A tabletop director whose epicurean deeds have landed her initial TV commercial assignments as well as a daytime TV show.
    • And a pair of brothers whose expansive still photography has over the past year translated well into spots and music video fare.
    While each filmmaker has progressed through different means and taken different paths, they share the uncommon bonds of inspiration, aspiration, talent and a penchant for collaboration. Here are their backstories.

Andreas Roth    Stephen Dickstein, a founding partner in the recently launched production house Alive & Well, referred to Andreas Roth as “the poster boy for the modern filmmaker, attesting to the power of the web. His work gains exposure on YouTube, which has helped him get recognized throughout the industry as a very talented young man.”
    So talented that Alive & Well signed Roth not right out of film school–but while he is still in school, continuing his studies at Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemberg in Germany. Roth recently started the third year of a four-year program.
    During his second year at Filmakademie, Roth made a student commercial for Dirt Devil titled “The Exorcist,” which went on to earn him inclusion in the 2011 Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase unveiled at Cannes. During the Cannes ad festival, he also garnered a joint first prize in the European film school category of the Young Director Awards competition. The spot plays like an exorcist’s nightmare with a young lass suspended on the ceiling, moving about wildly, violently screaming and seemingly possessed by evil. It turns out the elderly woman who lives on the floor above is running her Dirt Devil vacuum, moving the nozzle back and forth–the suction is the “other worldly force” rather than any satanic spirit. An end tag contains the slogan, “You know when it’s the devil,” accompanied by the Dirt Devil logo.
    Roth first posted the Dirt Devil spot on YouTube. Dickstein related that he was turned onto the piece by a couple of colleagues who saw it online. Dickstein in turn sought out Roth and found an emerging talent whom he described as “a very intelligent, mature thinking filmmaker as reflected in the work he’s done thus far.”
    That body of work includes not only “The Exorcist” which has generated some 2 million hits on YouTube, but a spec spot Roth helmed in the prior year, his first at Filmakademie–“Typewriter,” a PSA which shows a journalist who faces a bullet for every key he strokes on the typewriter as he tries to compose a story on government corruption. Appearing on screen is a sobering message: “Freedom of speech still means death for many journalists.” The spot went on to be adopted by the International Society for Human Rights and won a Grand Award and a Gold Award from World Media Festival 2011, was shortlisted at the ED Awards 2011, and earned a 1st Pencil at the D&AD Student Awards.
    The visceral poignancy of “Typewriter” juxtaposed with the comedic and visual sensibilities of “The Exorcist” already represent a wide directorial range resistant to pigeon-holing.
    “Typewriter” incidentally wasn’t Roth’s first experience of having a spec piece embraced by a real-world client. After high school, Roth interned at Markenfilm in Hamburg and later German ad agency Jung von Matt. During this time, he and a friend wrote a spot for a Hamburg newspaper. They approached the client and their piece ended up as a cinema commercial that ran for the newspaper over a couple of years.
    It was the internships on the production company and ad agency sides of the business that gave Roth his initial exposure to the ad arena. He started out running errands and assisting at Markenfilm before taking on duties there as a video operator on film shoots. At Jung von Matt, he moved up to intern as a junior editor. Roth liked the variety of work the advertising biz had to offer and so when he gained acceptance into the prestigious Filmakademie, he chose to have his studies there geared to a career in commercial filmmaking.
    Now Roth has the extraordinary circumstance of being a student who is repped as a director by a high-profile international production house. While Dickstein cannot recall of another such example during his lengthy tenure in the business, the bottom line for him is that “what’s extraordinary are the films Andreas had already made. That’s what drew us to him. That’s what has attracted interest in him from different agency people. But we want the right project. We are not in any rush to get a job just for the sake of getting something. We are being selective to support the goal of developing Andreas not just to be a working director but a top director in the business.”

Tucker Gates    Tucker Gates made his first splash in TV drama, graduating from helming second unit to full fledged directing early in his career on such shows as Wiseguy and 21 Jump Street. From there came tours of directorial duty on such shows as The X Files, Alias, House, Carnivale, Roswell, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, CSI, and Lost. While finding the work challenging and fulfilling, Gates also felt he was getting pigeonholed, with The X Files leading to other sci-fi show gigs–so he made a conscious decision to branch out into comedy.
    His big break on that front came when he landed producing and directing duties on the satiric series The Job starring Denis Leary and written by Peter Tolan. “Working with them intensively for two seasons,” related Gates, “taught me a lot about comedy and how to make it work–how to make a scene funny without a joke, how to fix a scene if it’s not working on set. Often something in a script reads funny but isn’t on set. At the same time something that doesn’t read funny can turn out funny because an actor takes hold of it a certain way. As a director, you have to make constant adjustments.”
    Gates’ prowess in adjusting properly is reflected in his work on such sitcoms as The Office, Bored to Death, Ugly Betty, Parks and Recreation, Californication and Weeds. “I like the fact that these aren’t cut from the broader comedic cloth but rather are smart comedies with what’s funny coming more out of situations than one liners,” said Gates.
    Now the director is looking to apply his narrative chops in comedy and drama to the advertising arena, both in terms of commercials and longer form branded content. Gates has chosen production house Independent Media as his commercialmaking roost, and right out of the gate garnered a couple of projects, a spot for Internet security software company Kaspersky, and a Hertz campaign, which included the centerpiece commercial “The Gas and the Brake,” which earned SHOOT Top Spot distinction back in the spring (SHOOTonline, 5/20).
    “The Gas and The Brake” shows us the power of genes, the point being that our inclinations are shaped in the womb as two ultrasounds demonstrate–one of a docile budding life, another that is dancing and hyper active. This later translates, respectively, into a guy (“the brake”) and a gal (“the gas”) whom we see grow up; the lass putting the pedal to the metal literally and figuratively, the lad playing it safety first. Vignettes of the guy’s subdued manner juxtaposed with the gal’s aggressive “carpe diem” approach make for a comedic ride as conceived by a creative team from DDB New York. The bottom-line marketing point is that no matter which you are–“the gas” or “the brake”–Hertz can accommodate your journey.
    “Hertz’s Gas and Brake Campaign was an exciting entry into creating commercials for a major brand,” said Gates. “My goal was to build an entertaining chemistry and dynamic on screen that causes viewers to immediately identify with the world of ‘The Gas’ and ‘The Brake’…. no matter if they are planners or if they prefer to fly by the seat of their pants.”
    For Gates, working with DDB New York group creative director Pat Carella, art director Leah Renbaum and copywriter Katie Riddle was akin “to working with writers on a TV show. They were so precise in what they wanted yet left room creatively for us to achieve what was needed. Condensing storytelling, making each frame count in a commercial is a great challenge, as is doing justice to a great concept.
    Gates observed that the Hertz experience can only serve to make him a better director when he returns to a TV series. “To work in such a collaborative way to tell a story, to take the Hertz concept and expand on it to tell a story working in concert with an agency team makes you sharper as a director. You have thirty or sixty seconds to work with, meaning you have to strip things down to their core while making sure you keep it funny and that the message works. With time limited, you have to be more disciplined with your approach and the way you work with actors. You need to attain a balance–giving them the room to play and bring something to the process while needing to hit each beat and moment. The experience brought an excitement to my directing. It reinvigorated me creatively. Plus you get to work with people you might not have gotten the chance to work with otherwise.”
    He cited as an example of the latter DP Mauro Fiore, ASC, who shot the Hertz spots. Fiore won the Best Cinematography Oscar last year for Avatar, and is also repped as a commercials director by Independent Media. “To get the chance to work with top-level artists like Mauro can only help you as a director. You learn from working with these people, and that’s another advantage of working in commercials,” said Gates.
    While commercials are informing his TV work, conversely Gates’ series experience enables him to bring more to his spotmaking endeavors. “Television a lot of the time is about reacting, thinking on your feet in the moment. You’re under a different kind of a time crunch in series television. But if an opportunity arises, you take advantage of it–like an actor taking something in a direction different than planned that adds something to a scene or the overall story. You adapt to what’s happening, you work closely with actors–and all this can translate well into the time crunch that is inherent in commercials.”
    Gates added that he likes the process in commercials, including pitching for work, sharing his vision, talking to agency creatives. “Even when I didn’t get the job, I liked the process. I had a pitch for DirecTV which I didn’t get. But the process was fun and challenging. Giving my take on the job, what it should be, bringing my strengths to what they were trying to do. Having collaborative exchanges with smart people is something I enjoy–sharing what you can bring to the table and seeing what they bring, then pushing that to a place where you can create something special can be quite gratifying. My experience thus far in commercials has been just that. I very much want to make a career out of this–not just in commercials but in some of the longer form branded content opportunities that are emerging.”
    Already emerging at press time were directorial gigs for Gates on spots for Ikea out of Ogilvy & Mather, New York, and the National Football League for Grey New York.

Peter Glanz    The recently launched AMC Digital Studios, which actively scouts for new filmmaking voices, has tabbed Peter Glanz as a directorial discovery–so much so that the original web programming division of AMC, the network which brought us Mad Men, the first cable series to ever win a Best Drama Emmy (an honor it has now earned four consecutive years), went with Glanz and his The Trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks as its first production. Shot in black-and-white cinematic style, Arthur Banks also marked the network’s first comedy series. Consisting of three episodes totaling 40-plus minutes, the show went live in August at amc.tv and Hulu.
    While Mad Men brought the 1960s advertising biz into contemporary primetime entertainment, Glanz–director, creator, editor, co-writer and an executive producer of the wry Arthur Banks–hopes the web series will generate additional momentum for his ad career. He is repped as a director for commercials and branded content by First Wave, a New York-based hybrid production/post/music house under the aegis of exec producer Justin Havlik.
    Arthur Banks stars Adam Goldberg in the title role of an accomplished playwright/director who stages a play that reflects his dysfunctional love life. We see how the two worlds parallel and then collide as his romantic escapades–which include his leading lady and her understudy–come alive on and off stage with a darkly tinged comic bent. Characters such as Banks’ therapist (played by Jeffrey Tambor) and a married male friend who too is romantically challenged add to the mix of angst, neuroses and self-deprecating humor. (At one point, the narrator tells us that Banks views his romantic relationship with the play’s lead actress as being “an allegory for the Spanish Inquisition.”)
    AMC gravitated to Glanz based on his work in short films. In 2008, he wrote and directed the short A Relationship in Four Days, which had its domestic and international debuts, respectively, at the Sundance Film Festival and Cannes Critics’ Week. Last year, Glanz’s short The Dinner Party premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. AMC became interested in a web series based on the male lead in The Dinner Party, building that character and his story. Glanz wrote the scripts and AMC was favorably impressed, not only green lighting them for the show but signing the director/writer to a first-look deal for TV and narrative web content.
    Though First Wave’s Havlik wasn’t directly involved in The Trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks, Glanz credited him with being “incredibly helpful in navigating the web world” and pointing the series in the right direction.
    Glanz actually has roots in spotmaking, which eventually led him to Havlik. After graduating from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., Glanz first moved into helming various fashion commercials and gaining representation from Paris production house Premiere Heure (which Glanz said still handles him on the other side of the Atlantic for select spots). This later brought him to stateside roost Grand Large headed by executive producer Steve Horton, a former Premiere Heure staffer. At Grand Large, Glanz met exec producer Havlik who in ’09 helped launch Grand Large’s GL-X, a division focused on new media projects, including varied forms of web content. When Havlik exited Grand Large to form First Wave, Glanz went with him earlier this year. Among their collaborations at Grand Large was an Estee Lauder perfume ad towards the end of 2010. This adds to a body of work for Glanz over the years that also spans commercials for fashion icons such as Marc Jacobs and Bergdorf Goodman.
    “After being heavily involved in commercials at the start of my career, I went on somewhat of a hiatus in order to pursue my work in short films and longer form project development,” related Glanz. “But I’ve always loved doing commercials…My hope is that the AMC web series will help to generate agency interest in me for commercials and branded web content.”
    Glanz plans to make his schedule accommodating for commercials and other forms of branded fare. Filming is taking place this month on The Longest Week, a feature adaptation of his short A Relationship In Four Days. Neda Armian (producer of Rachel Getting Married and who served as Glanz’s producing partner on Arthur Banks) is producing The Longest Week, which stars Jason Bateman as a man living in luxury at his parents’ upscale NYC hotel. Within a week, he is evicted, disinherited and in love. Glanz noted that once he is in post on the movie in November, he would be able to take on ad assignments.

Kamp Grizzly    This summer, Venice, Calif.-headquartered production house Wild Plum took on national representation for Portland, Ore.-based collective Kamp Grizzly, which specializes in production, animation, web design and humor. Kamp Grizzly’s recent directorial credits include TV and web projects for Adidas, Target, Nike, Starbucks and the Oregon Lottery.
    Founded by owner/creative director/director Dan Portrait in 2005, Kamp Grizzly started to build momentum last year with such work as a “Cupcake Cannon” viral for clothing company Johnny Cupcakes which has generated some 750,000 hits. Full-time Kamp Grizzly members are: Portrait; sr. editor/director Jared Evans; director Michael Johnson; exec producer Jeff Harding; motion graphics artist Cory Otjen; editorial/VFX artist xTonyx Wallace; 3D artist Michael Gibson; motion designer Kevin Hakim; and producer Nick Traeger. The collective also relies on an extensive network of freelance talent based on the needs and scope of a project.
    The Kamp Grizzly moniker was inspired by childhood summers spent at YMCA camps by Portrait, Evans and close friend Kyle Guyer, which included an overnight excursion at Camp Grizzly. The three also attended the University of Oregon together where they met Harding. Guyer, a shooter/editor and frequent collaborator on projects, passed away a week before graduation. The Kamp Grizzly name was a way to connect his initials to their vibe and pay tribute to a man who provided inspiration.
    The alluded to new Adidas job was for its Originals line of sneakers and street wear. The integrated campaign features rappers Snoop Dogg, Big Sean and Mike G, and Domo Genesis of Odd Future, pop starlet Sky Ferreira, basketball player Dwight Howard, and fashion icon Jeremy Scott. The campaign includes a :60 national TV spot, :15, :30 and :60 teasers, as well as :40 “deep dive” digital videos which take a closer look at Big Sean, Snoop Dog, Howard and Scott, delving into their thoughts on originality.
    The ad was shot at four parties in Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta and Portland. Keen on staying true to the Adidas branding and attitude, Kamp Grizzly took a more natural and stripped-down approach to the production.
    “It was important for us to keep things as real as possible,” explains Portrait, who directed the campaign. “We casted regular people, and then documented the honest fun that was happening within each city. Stylistically, it just feels more accessible and authentic. We were also excited to include talent such as Odd Future and Jeremy Scott who definitely lend a lot of credibility to a younger generation.”
    For the three-week production, Kamp Grizzly used the same crew in all four cities, a longstanding practice they employ on every project.
    Kamp Grizzly served as hybrid ad agency/production house on the integrated Adidas campaign, working with digital agency Roundhouse in Portland.
    For Portland agency Borders Perrin Norrander, Kamp Grizzly turned out a “Winavator” campaign to promote Oregon Lottery’s Reality TV Scratchers. Unsuspecting “contestants” enter an elevator and are thrust into the “winavator” game show. A host played by comedian Ian Karmel greets and shocks people, getting them to engage in silly scenarios which are captured via hidden camera. The elevator hijinks include cycling furiously on a stationary bike while squirting cheese from a can or bashing an inflatable clown bop bag. The crew shot this offbeat game show in four different elevators throughout Portland over the course of two days.
    “Hidden camera is always a lot of fun,” said Portrait. “Truth is stranger than fiction and we always look forward to seeing how real life plays out in our cameras.”
    And the Kamp Grizzly collective recently collaborated with Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, on a Target online campaign consisting of five :15s running on Hulu and YouTube. In the :15 titled “Drink,” three male roomies enjoy a lazy afternoon in front of the TV set. One leaps off the couch and turns on the kitchen faucet. Resting his head on a dish sponge, he gulps thirstily from the faucet. Colorful motion graphics “Room Essentials Tumblers 2-Pack $1.99” pop up in the bottom right corner of the screen before segueing into the Target bull’s-eye logo and end tag, “Everything you need for college.” Kamp Grizzle also executed banner campaigns, takeovers, social media and  mobile elements.
    Kamp Grizzly has enjoyed a multi-faceted working relationship with Wieden, having for instance been involved in the Old Spice Direct Response interactive digital campaign with spokesman Isaiah Mustafa. Kamp Grizzly managed and staffed a team of editors and designed the infrastructure for production of some 180-plus video responses from “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” to questions from fans and celebs pulled from Twitter, Facebook and other social media portals. (The creatives at Wieden directed these videos on the fly during a two-and-a-half-day stretch.)

Claire Thomas    Best known for her tabletop work, which has been featured on her epicurean blog, “The Kitchy Kitchen,” Claire Thomas–whose culinary photography has appeared on such outlets as Zagat, The Huffington Post, Refinery 29 and PopSugar–recently made her TV spot directorial debut via Green Dot Films, a McDonald’s “Real Fruit Smoothies” commercial for DDB Chicago. Thomas has since gone on to helm a follow-up spot, this one titled “Perfection” for McDonald’s Premium Chicken Sandwich, also out of DDB. Upcoming ad assignments include a Pepperidge Farms Baked Natural Chips commercial for Y&R New York.
    Thomas also has a new daytime TV show, Food for Thought with Claire Thomas which airs on ABC affiliate stations on the weekends. The show debuted last month, is produced by Litton Entertainment, and explores food as a lifestyle, introducing audiences to foods from varied cultures and sharing info such as ways to grow healthy produce within one’s own community.
    Thomas has generated a following through her aforementioned blog which features “30 Second Recipe” videos that present cinematic images, representing a departure from the more standard “how-to” depictions for food preparation and cooking. Thomas related that an “incurable curiosity about food has pushed me to taste, create, and study anything and everything.  I work as a food stylist, photographer, filmmaker and writer using my blog as an experimental playground.”
    Most recently Thomas shot the look book for the jewelry/fashion brand Luvaj which featured high speed photography and was shot on the Phantom.  She also recent booked another national campaign for a major U.S. client that she wasn’t at liberty to publicly disclose as SHOOT went to press.

Sanchez Brothers    The Sanchez Brothers, siblings Carlos and Jason Sanchez, hail from Montreal and began their careers in the world of still photography. Their large-scale photographic prints, which are cinematic in scope and compelling in content, were quickly likened to film productions, making their transition to filmmakers a logical progression.
    The brothers noted that everything about their photographic work has its roosts in filmmaking–building sets, casting actors, using artificial light sources. Having focused for so many years on creating single frames that encompass an idea and message, they believe such fine-tuned attention to detail on all levels of production and the fact that they did about 99 percent of everything themselves for each image, has given them valuable experience when it comes to directing.
    In the one year they have been directing, The Sanchez Brothers have made music videos for The Stills, “I’m With You,” and The World Provider, “I Got it All Wrong,” and commercials for TV5, Familiprix and ScotiaBank.
    For the latter, the Sanchez Brothers directed “Fan For Life” out of Canadian agency Sid Lee. The nostalgic spot takes us through four decades of Quebec hockey history through a personal connection as we see a boy become a man, then a husband and finally a father as reflected in scenes of him watching hockey on television with his family. The camera goes from one room to the next, each representing a different period in the progression of our protagonist’s life, starting as a young boy seated next to his dad all the way to his becoming the father and seated with his wife and young son. Shot in one continuous take with a Steadicam, the spot was situated on set with all four rooms attached–each room representing a decade with folks watching TV. The set had a lighting system connected to dimmers to control the transition from room to room, or one era to the next, live on camera. As the camera traveled through one room and approached another, the lights in that room would fade to black as those in the next faded in. Footage on the TV sets in the rooms were synched live as well through a closed circuit system. Doing it live as opposed to handling the effects in post gave the spot an immediacy and authenticity.
    The Sanchez Brothers are represented in Quebec by Montreal-based Quatre Zéro Un and recently joined Partners Film which makes the directors available for the first time to the rest of Canada. The directing duo currently does not have U.S. representation.
    “Coming from a photography background, The Sanchez Brothers’ film work possesses a rich cinematic feel,” says Partners’ exec producer. Aerin Barnes.
    The Sanchez Brothers have received much acclaim for their photography. They have created two installation projects that have been exhibited in Canada and the United States. They exhibit their art internationally and have had solo exhibitions in cities such as Montreal, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston and internationally in Brussels, Strasbourg, Madrid and Amsterdam. Their work is included in many public and private collections such as The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, The National Gallery of Canada, Le Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Foam Fotografiemuseum-Amsterdam, Martin Z. Margulies Collection, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Le Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, The Gemeentemuseum Helmonds–Netherlands, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
    Currently the Sanchez Brothers are writing and directing what they hope to be their first feature film, working with the Montreal-based production company, micro_scope.

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