“The real appeal of commercials is that they make me a better filmmaker,” observed Doug Liman. “I always thought this conceptually. It takes so long to get a movie into production, you want to stay active in the meantime. It stands to reason that commercials are a great way to stay sharp. But it’s much more than that. I still consider Go to be my best movie. And it’s no coincidence that this movie followed the most intensive period of commercial production in my career. My father was sick so I didn’t want to go off and do a movie. I decided to do commercials so I could stay close to home and be around more for him. By doing many commercials back to back, you learn an efficiency of storytelling. You get a shot, you get a performance. You’re happy with it. But that scene took 4.7 seconds and you need to get the same thing in 3.5 seconds. After a year thinking and working that way, it changes you as a filmmaker. I consider my audience’s time valuable so maybe I can make the same movie in an hour and a half instead of an hour and 45 minutes. Or in an hour and 45 minutes, maybe I can give the audience twice as much.”
Liman noted that a common litmus test, especially among directors, is to watch a film without sound.
“You’re on an airplane and looking at the screen of the person next to you–if you can follow the movie without hearing a word, it’s well directed. Commercials sort of by definition meet that test. They require that level of direction. You have to work hard on so many levels. For the things you value most as a director, commercials push the hardest for you to achieve them.”
The alluded to Go followed Liman’s acclaimed Swingers. Go too was a lauded film, earning Liman a Film Independent Spirit Best Director Award nomination in 2000. His filmography as a director has gone on to include such notable features as The Bourne Identity (starring Matt Damon), Mr. and Mrs. Smith (starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie), Fair Game (nominated for the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or in 2010), and last year’s release Edge of Tomorrow (Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt). At press time, Liman was in Atlanta prepping his next feature, a political satire starring Cruise.
From the aftermath of Swingers on, Liman has also been active in commercials, all via Independent Media, a production house founded by executive producer Susanne Preissler. “Susanne saw Swingers and approached me about doing commercials,” recalled Liman. “She brought me a job for Airwalk. I tried it and loved the experience. I was excited and terrified to make a movie condensed into a short time frame. Each job that Susanne has presented to me over the years was accompanied by her explaining why it would be good for me to do this or that particular commercial. It was always phrased that way, to help me grow as a filmmaker. It’s not the norm in this business to be pushed to become a better filmmaker. Susanne does that and I trust her.”
Nike, Cadillac, Visa
Among Liman’s early spots was one released the same year as Go–an iconic Nike Golf ad starring Tiger Woods who is simply seen bouncing a golf ball off his club repeatedly and then finally swinging away at the ball in mid-air and driving it effortlessly into orbit toward the green. Agency was Wieden+Kennedy.
Liman has kept his hand consistently in select commercials and branded content throughout his career, most recently with a Cadillac campaign out of Publicis New York and Publicis UK. Debuting on last month’s Oscar telecast was an anthem spot titled “The Daring” which promoted Cadillac’s “Dare Greatly” mantra, featuring the unique accomplishments of such notables as filmmaker Richard Linklater, computer pioneer Steve Wozniak and fashion designer Jason Wu. An earlier teaser spot, “The Arena,” was filmed from inside a car as it drives around downtown NYC, contrasting the color, vibrancy, style and feel of the neighborhoods against an emotional rendition of Theodore Roosevelt’s iconic “Man In The Arena Speech” voiced by Kimberly Dube and advocating that we “Dare Greatly” in life.
Cadillac gave Liman the opportunity to collaborate with two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer (Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan) Janusz Kaminski. “I try to come out of everything I do knowing more than I knew going in,” affirmed Liman. “I consider everything to be film school for myself. I remember when Stacey Snider who ran Universal at the time told me when making The Bourne Identity that ‘this is not your fifty-million-dollar film school.’ At that time, I had done two independent features. ‘You think I know how to make Bourne Identity.’ I will know, though, by the time I’m done and I’ve learned along the way. I consider every commercial I do to be going back to film school. And with Cadillac, I just went to school with Janusz Kaminski. How lucky can you be?”
Kaminski (who’s also available as a director via Independent Media) had a major positive influence on Liman. “Working with him was one of the most dynamic and rewarding relationships I’ve ever had with a DP,” assessed Liman. “Cadillac [‘The Arena’] was not a tightly scripted spot–on the page, you knew it could be interesting. But it would only be interesting if we made it interesting. It just called for shots of the streets of New York. There weren’t any outside crazy elements. No zombies on the streets. It was regular old Lower Manhattan. How do we take the ordinary and make it look special? In the movies I’m often called on to do the opposite–to do something special and to make it look ordinary. Janusz helped us achieve what we needed and helped to broaden my filmmaking dramatically.”
Last year, Liman directed Visa Checkout’s “Surfer” for BBDO New York. The spot featured professional surfer Kolohe Andino demonstrating the ease and simplicity of using Visa Checkout while riding a tube wave. Billed as being the easier way to pay online, Visa Checkout enables Andino to order and pay for pizza as he navigates his way through a major ocean wave.
“I was afraid of drowning every single day,” recollected Liman of the “Surfer” commercial. “It was exhilarating, the happiest I’ve ever been on a movie set.”
Liman said that the Cadillac and Visa Checkout assignments were “different from what I had done previously. I’m always looking to do things that force me to grow. I don’t want to churn out something I’ve done before. I’ve done so many different kinds of movies and commercials that people don’t know what to make of me. I’ve been fortunate that way, particularly because studios often want to pigeonhole you.”
