Director Brian Scott Weber has joined Los Angeles-based No Prisoners, the live-action spot production company headed by president/managing director Bruce Martin that opened last fall as a sister shop to No Prisoners 3DFX (SHOOT, 11/5/99, p.1).
Weber comes over from bicoastal commercial production house Atherton, which recently changed its name to Cylo in conjunction with its recent repositioning as a new media company (SHOOT, 3/17, p. 1).
Martin said he first saw Weber’s work early in the director’s career. At the time, Martin was president of bicoastal RSA USA and, he recounted, was duly impressed with several spec spots Weber had directed, including "Later Means Never," a stylized black-and-white Nike piece. However, Martin explained, the timing was wrong for RSA to take on another director as the company was then developing its other young talent, such as David Dobkin (now with bicoastal HSI Productions).
Weber subsequently joined bicoastal Johns + Gorman Films (now JGF) in early ’96, where he helmed spots including "Ins and Outs" for Haworth Furniture via Cramer-Krasselt, Chicago, and "Subway" for Discover Brokerage via J. Walter Thompson, San Francisco. Two years later, Weber moved over to Atherton (SHOOT, 2/13/98, p.7), where his credits included spots for Bell Atlantic via Arnold Communications, Boston; Kellogg’s for Leo Burnett Co., Chicago; SunCom out of The Tombras Group, Knoxville, Ten.; and Nationwide Bank via Temerlin McClain, Irving, Texas.
Martin and Weber were in contact periodically over the years. It was during a sales trip to New York to promote No Prisoners that Martin was prompted to track down Weber. BBDO New York senior VP/group head/TV production Gene Lofaro told Martin that the agency had just done an effects-oriented Duracell Ultra spot with Weber; the ad presented a high-speed train as a metaphor for the power of the battery. Having admired the spot, Martin decided to contact Weber about joining his company.
"I told [Weber] I’m trying to build a visual company," said Martin. "In the same way that [bicoastal] hungry man is someplace you immediately think of for comedy, we can be a visual solution here. We have very visual directors who do storytelling, performance-driven, post-enhanced work. We have a 3-D effects and compositing company under the same roof. And Brian fits so perfectly into the model I’m working with."
Since the two spec spots, Weber has built up an impressive body of work, assessed Martin. "It’s incredibly cinematic and visually sophisticated. If you look at that Duracell spot and some of the other things he’s done, it’s extraordinary."
Weber told SHOOT that he had some awareness of changes in the works at Atherton when he left in December. "The efforts of the company were being put in that [new media] direction," said Weber. "I’m not opposed to any of that, but my first and foremost desire was to further myself as a filmmaker. And it was just time for a change."
Given his ongoing relationship with Martin, said Weber, it was a natural choice to join No Prisoners. Observing that Martin is "very persistent," the director said he offered a certain familiarity.
"When I met with Bruce, he had such a clear vision as to what he wanted to do," added Weber. "It’s exciting to me because there’s a lot of emphasis on comedy work within the business, and Bruce said he wanted to make a company that would be the premiere visualists in town. When I was at Johns+Gorman—which was predominantly comedy—at the time, they’d always say to me, ‘We just don’t do your thing here.’ It was such a relief to finally find a company that said, ‘We want to do your thing here.’ "
The aforementioned "Train," which Weber shot on location in Germany, was the director’s last Atherton job. It opens with scenes of a bullet train hurling forward. At mid-point, the train goes into what seems to be a tunnel; as the end of the train passes, its force causes a CG image of the copper-top battery to swing around behind it. The tunnel spins around to reveal it is the battery, which a hand picks up and puts into a Walkman. The effects were provided by Industrial Light+Magic Commercial Productions, San Rafael, and by Ring Of Fire, West Hollywood.
"It was fun shooting overseas," said Weber, "because a lot of the safety regulations you’d have in terms of how close you could stand to the train with the camera were quite different. I was literally operating the camera inches away from the train. All the camera shake is natural."
After graduating in ’90 with a degree in architecture from Columbia University in New York, Weber worked his way up the ranks in the Los Angeles market. He served as a production assistant and camera assistant on music videos and spots before moving into directing. "I love his pedigree," said Martin. "He has an incredible sense of design and a certain cultural reservoir of creative solutions for visual problems."
Weber is currently being bid on various projects for undisclosed clients, said Martin. No Prisoners is repped by New York-based Roxanne & Co. on the East Coast, and by Chicago-based Nikki Weiss & Co. in the Midwest. Martin is presently handling West Coast sales duties himself.
