But what I really want to do is direct." That plea, long a staple of movie star interviews, seems to be circulating at advertising agencies these days. In the last year or two, a number of high-profile ad shop executives have left comfortable, reasonably secure jobs at agencies to plunge headlong into the competitive waters of full-time commercial directing.
Generally, they are art directors, copywriters or creative directors who have, one way or another, been able to direct some spots, and found the experience to be exhilarating and even fun. Some, like Chuck Bennett and Clay Williams, formerly managing partners/creative directors at TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles, found that the higher they climbed at the agency, the less time they had for the things they liked to doanamely, create ads. The two now direct as a team called Chuck & Clay, out of Crossroads Films, bicoastal and Chicago. For others, like Larry Frey, Paul Gold and John Adams, a love of filmmaking prompted the jump. Frey, a founding partner of Amsterdam agency 180, now directs spots through bicoastal/international @radical.media; Gold, formerly of Bozell, New York, is now at The Story Companies, bicoastal, Chicago and Dallas; and Adams, formerly director of broadcast production at DDB Dallas, is at bicoastal Area 51 Films. And Bob Kerstetter, co-founder/co-creative director at agency Black Rocket, San Francisco, has learned that directing his own work is the best way to see it completed the way he wants it. However, Kerstetter has no plans to jump over from the agency to the production house side of the commercialmaking fence.
To a man, the six believe that their agency background and experience have made them better directors. "I believe that there are great advantages to coming out of the agency system," Frey says, "because I think you understand the neuroses that are going on. I empathize with those concerns and neuroses. I think you better understand the strategies. You are more aware of the copy and the integration of the copy and the picture than a lot of directors are."
Frey cut his directing teeth at Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore., before founding 180. His first spots were for a Portland radio station, using footage shot during an interview with singer-songwriter Randy Newman. "It was just budgetary," says Frey. "We thought, ‘Do we really want to pull a director in for this kind of thing?’ The budget was about ten or twelve thousand dollars."
Frey’s big directing break came in 1993, when the shooting of Subaru’s "Factory" was going badly. President/creative director Dan Wieden and executive producer Bill Davenport turned to Frey. "They said, ‘Larry, why don’t you get a camera and just start shooting footage yourself,’ " Frey recalls. "We were shooting in a factory and we ended up using all my footage. It won a lot of awards. It was the first spot that featured floating type on the imagery. It was kind of a landmark in its day. It was, I think, the first time people had shot a factory in a real documentary kind of way."
Adams moved into directing from his production job at DDB, but he started his career as an art director. Having seen hundreds of directors in action, he counts his agency experience as a big plus that many of them lack. "I used to see a lot of directors get frustrated or angry when clients would want to change things or suddenly a script would change at the last minute," he recalls. "Directors like to get locked into things. I think I’m able to stay more flexible because I’m accustomed to that process. I also think it helps in post, because I tend to shoot for the edit. I can remember so many times being with the editor and wishing we’d covered another shot."
