LOS ANGELES-Bicoastal Coppos Films wasn’t looking to sign a new director-until executive producers Allison Nunn and Bill Bratkowski saw Steve Suchman’s spec reel.
"We all felt it was one of the better spec reels that any of us, including our sales reps, had seen in a long time," said Nunn. Coppos executive producer Bob Samuel added, "He really knows his way around the business, not only on the production side, but on the agency side as well."
Formerly a production designer, Suchman graduated with a master’s degree from the Southern California Institute of Architecture, L.A., and immediately started taking on freelance production-design projects. After a year in the business, he opened his own company, Steve Suchman Design (now defunct), and began a close working relationship with bicoastal/international The Artists Company, whose directors he worked with in L.A., New York and Toronto. A couple of years ago, Susan Neill, then a rep for The Artists Company, Toronto, suggested that Suchman start directing. "It was something I always wanted to do, but I wasn’t sure I could. But after talking to her, I decided to go for it," explained Suchman.
It took two and a half years for Suchman to complete his reel, which consists of three spec spots, "Poker Night," "College Fund" and "Yangki in the Haight," which he produced, directed and funded himself. "Completing that reel was all about keeping people enrolled in the project and making sure they got something out of it too," related Suchman, who said he exhausted all of his previously formed relationships to get the reel done. "I would just go to people and say, "Look, I have a really unreasonable request.’ "
Each spot on the reel employs a different style and is meant to be representative of Suchman’s experience in the business as a designer. "He picked three different visual styles to execute some ideas of a very high sensibility, and it skews to a very high-end audience in terms of spec work, which is a testament to his maturity," said Samuel.
"Poker Night," a heavily effects-driven, 74-second spot for Motorola, is the most ambitious of the three. It features Seymour Cassel (who coincidentally lives in Suchman’s building) playing poker with his mates in a futuristic, Star Trek-like setting. The guys banter in muted and unreal tones, not about babes and beer, but about technology and how it’s changing their lives. Just after Cassel wins the hand, he looks at his wristwatch and a computer-generated liquid face that informs him it’s time to go. The disgruntled players dematerialize one by one as Cassel smugly returns to his space station, victorious. The final shot is a grandiose wide view of Cassel’s era, with flying cars swirling around in a futuristic universe. "The idea is," explained Suchman, "in the future, we’ll all be totally integrated with our technology. They [the players] are able to spend intimate time together in a very unlikely spot, and the way they talk about technology reveals that it is a part of their life."
"College Fund," which Suchman created with producer Henry Lu of Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, Ore., for the Canadian College Fund, tells the true story of a student who lives out of a van in order to pay for his education. The :60 spot is shot in black and white and set in the dead of winter in Toronto. Beautiful shots reveal the student in barren settings on a college campus, talking in voiceover about living in a van and what his education means to him. "We used Walden as a subtext," said Suchman, "where he’s saying, "What gives a man his measure of worth?’ And the answer is, "What he puts forth and what is at risk.’ "
The last spot in Suchman’s gallery of work is an AT&T ad about a small, San Francisco-based wallpaper company’s ability to have global access. Shot in a contemporary, colorful, documentary style, "Yangki in the Haight" shows the making of original wallpaper designs while the company’s founders talk about what it’s like to run a small but global business. "I thought the AT&T spots were real, and a lot of people that have seen the reel have said, "Are you sure these are spec spots?’ " said Samuel.
Suchman has yet to score any big boards, but based on his reel, Coppos Films sees his future as bright. "There’s dialogue, there’s effects-all the elements are in place for a promising career," concluded Samuel.
