Kevin Donovan is an ex-football player. For three years, he was the starting outside linebacker at Montana State University, Bozeman, Mont. He was even an NFL hopeful, until his knee gave out and ended his football career. Today, he directs award-winning commercials. So, how does one go from being a hard-nosed football player to being a spot helmer?
"I could always really draw," says Donovan, talking with SHOOT via cell phone from the streets of Toronto, where he’s currently working on the follow-up to "Rant," the Molson Canadian spot out of Bensimon Byrne D’Arcy, Toronto. "All through my childhood I took art classes."
Growing up in Montana, he occasionally borrowed his dad’s Super-8 camera and filmed his brothers playing sports. "Sports were sort of my whole life when I was a kid," notes Donovan, who has been helming spots for six and a half years.
Donovan’s older brother Pat Donovan was also a football player; he played professionally for the Dallas Cowboys, and many talked about Kevin following in his footsteps. "Pro scouts figure you might have similar blood, and my brother was so successful," Kevin explains. "But I was never going to be the phenom he was. He was always an amazing athlete. I was never the athlete [my brother was]."
That career-ending knee injury turned out to be something of a blessing for the younger Donovan. "I had friends who spent years toiling away with the football thing," he states. "But it can delay your course into mainstream life quite a bit."
After graduating from Montana State, Donovan got a job working for Boeing Aircraft in Seattle as a Resource Controller Class B. It took him nine months to realize he was in the wrong place. "I just remember thinking, ‘Boy, this isn’t too good,’ " he says, laughing. So he left Boeing, put together an art portfolio, and got accepted at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, Calif. "From there, things changed quite a bit," he recalls.
After stints as a creative at a number of agencies, including the New York offices of shops such as J. Walter Thompson, Cliff Freeman and Partners, and BBDO, Donovan decided to give directing a try. He put together a spec spot and was promptly signed by bicoastal Bedford Falls in 1993.
He enjoyed his success as a spot director, but decided to branch out into music videos, and signed with bicoastal/international Satellite in ’96 to direct both music videos and spots. He eventually helmed clips for the likes of Sammy Hagar and Cheap Trick. Then, in late ’97, Donovan came back to Bedford Falls, concentrating mostly on spotwork.
new look
Donovan’s aesthetic recently got a bit of an overhaul. "My reel is probably visually less interesting than it once was, but conceptually better," he reports. "I just woke up one day and kind of looked around and saw a lot of people who were doing a lot better [than I was], whose sensibilities seemed a lot more simple … I think I scared agencies with a sensibility that was maybe too complicated. The best commercials tend to be simple, just one thought. It’s a thirty-second medium. Writing is everything. And a joke tends to work a lot better in thirty seconds than a story that has some secondary layering."
Donovan’s ads for UC Berkeley’s athletic department—"Funeral" and "Exam"—both out of Black Rocket, San Francisco, illustrate the director’s new look. "Funeral," which copped a Silver Lion at this year’s Cannes International Advertising Festival, shows a graveside service. The quiet of the solemn ceremony is shattered when a man, who thinks he is whispering, starts shouting things like, "I just saw him a week ago. He looked great." The outburst is the result of having attended a sporting event at UC Berkeley’s new stadium, which is so large that only shouting will do.
Donovan is very careful not to overwhelm his productions with art
