There’s a lot of fancy production gear around these days, and some directors will give any new gadget a try. But director Paul Giraud likes to keep it simple. Just hand him an Arri IIC—the camera used to shoot newsreel footage during World War II—and a couple of lenses, and he’s off to the races. Last fall, Giraud, who acts as his own DP, traveled the globe for Arnold Communications, Boston, directing four Royal Caribbean spots, using only his Arri IIC and three lenses.
Giraud, who has been with bi-coastal HSI Productions for 11 years, seems to thrive on spontaneity and invention. The son of a British mother and a French father, Giraud was born and raised in South Africa. "My dad gave me a spring-driven Bolex as a kid," says Giraud, who is now 46 and based in Malibu, Calif. "That really started my interest in photography. When I finished university, I thought, ‘If I’m going to go through life working, I want to do something I really enjoy. Let me try the film business.’ That’s really how it started, and I never looked back."
The film business in South Africa began in the ’30s, but commercial television didn’t begin until the early ’70s. With the latter came a surge in TV advertising and a demand for production talent. Giraud got his start by shooting freelance news footage for ABC. He also found work as an assistant cameraman on British-produced feature films like The Wild Geese and Zulu Dawn. "British crews are brought up in that old school of spending years on each rung of the technical ladder," says Giraud. "The result is that they’re such old pros and you can learn from them. The South African system was just the opposite. If you went in there and attacked it with energy and commitment and produced results, you could progress really fast, very far, very quickly."
His varied résumé and diverse reel, Giraud says, has helped him avoid being stereotyped as a certain type of spot director. "I try to go for people that are real. I love big exterior stuff and interior lighting stuff. And I love humor and characters. But I think visually." One of Giraud’s recent, highly visual efforts was a three-spot package for Aetna U.S. Healthcare via McKinney & Silver, Raleigh, N.C. The ads, "Home Plate," "Diner" and "Labor Day," feature everyday people who need information and healthcare advice.
World Traveler
Giraud, who says he uses storyboards only as a guide, cites the Royal Caribbean campaign as an ideal assignment. "We charged around the planet and then we grabbed stuff," he says. "We literally went to countries for two or three days, ran around, looked at what worked, shot some stuff and came back. It was a great project. There was a lot of energy."
The Royal Caribbean spots ("World Can’t Come to You," "Voyager," "Big Difference" and "Not By You"), which began airing in January, are designed to attract younger vacationers, and are set to Iggy Pop’s "Lust For Life." "When I first got the call that there was a cruise line ad they wanted me to do, I said, ‘Forget it, man!’" Giraud recalls. "And they said, ‘No, we don’t want the old lady dancing on deck with the captain at sunset. We want to do something that will rock the boat, so to speak.’ Whether it’s going to work in the long term, who knows? I think the most successful advertising campaigns are something that you build at. What I loved about that agency is they were totally open to something that was different."
Any production problems? "All the time," says Giraud. "That’s filmmaking, which is fifty percent problem solving, fifty percent inspiration. Every day there’s another problem. We were flying from Cairo via London to Mexico, and British Airways had lost all our camera equipment. [Since] we had to shoot the next morning, we had to find a camera and find a lens. Something invariably changes and you’ve got to adapt really quickly, and if you can’t do that, you’ll sink. But I thrive on that. It’s what I love about the business."
If you’re traveling the world, it helps to pack light. Giraud packed "a basic hand-held camera and one lens—the Arri IIC. It’s incredibly rugged, and you can take it anywhere. It’s a very simple mechanism. I firmly believe if you can’t shoot with a simple camera and one lens, then you’re in trouble. A hand-held gives a wonderful kind of freedom of composition and spontaneity."
Giraud’s commercial work occasionally has an edgy, mysterious quality to it. "I’m not afraid of shadows," he says. "I like stuff that doesn’t give everything away, so I tend to light with a lot of contrast. It’ll be a lot of backlight or even just a big single source from the side. Again, I find that if you can’t do it with three or four lights, then you can’t light it."
Giraud says if he had a talent for painting, he would have pursued fine arts instead of photography. He especially admires the moody sea battle and shipwreck images of J.M.W. Turner, an early 19th century British painter. "If you look at the great painters, their light sources tend to be very directional, and it’s the quality of the light that’s so important," says Giraud, who says he tries for the same effect with his camera. The texture and grain of film are important to him, he says, so he never makes a transfer off the negative. "I always make a low-con print and transfer all my footage off the print. I get a wonderful, textured quality," he says.
It is almost axiomatic for commercial directors to yearn for a feature film. Not Paul Giraud. "I love commercials," he says. "I love the fact that you’re thrown into new situations. You get addicted to this change, this energy, this constant flow. I’ve loved every day in the business. The only thing I hate is conference calls. I don’t think anybody appreciates those. But the shooting process is just so exhilarating."c
