Director Chris Smith set the bar pretty high with his first commercial campaign: a package of spots for SBC Communications/Pacific Bell via Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco. The deadpan ads "Neighborhood" and "Cops"—about a suburban neighborhood that becomes a battle zone because of overcrowded Internet connections—won a Gold Lion at the 2001 Cannes International Advertising Festival
Since directing the ads last year, Smith—who is represented for spots by Santa Monica-based Independent Media—has helmed more than a half-dozen campaigns for clients such as Sutter Home, TiVo, Homestore.com, Volkswagen and Nokia. Among his latest projects is a six-spot package for Earthlink via TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles, which delves into the issue of privacy and personal information. In "Bar," for example, a male patron at a watering hole asks the woman sitting next to him for her phone number. After she complies, he promptly sells the number to the bartender and another patron for five dollars each. "Harris" follows a guy walking down a busy city street. Everyone he passes makes personal marketing pitches regarding things such as his job situation, his love life, the cleanliness of his carpets and his future.
Smith also recently directed three ads for Toyota out of Saatchi & Saatchi LA, Torrance, Calif., which present the idea that Toyotas look fast, even at a standstill. In one of those, "Dog," a family canine runs across a yard and gives chase to the car parked out front. The dog miscalculates, however, crashing into the automobile and letting out a defeated yelp.
What it all means is that Smith—who is perhaps best known for his generically titled documentary American Movie, which he co-directed with Sarah Price, and which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in ’99—is fast gaining a reputation in the spot world. American Movie is a documentary about Mark Borchardt and his quest to make a horror film called Coven.
Films To Spots
The Milwaukee-based director attributes his successful transition from indie filmmaker to spot helmer to a positive working relationship with agency creatives. "Films are usually tighter on time and money than commercials, so, if anything, commercials were easier [to do]," says the director, who earned a master’s degree in film from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
"To have fifty people on the crew allows you to be more efficient, and to spend more time thinking creatively. Pac Bell was one of the best experiences I’ve had," he continues, "but I’ve found on every commercial that I seem to have a good ability to tell from a phone call if I can work with the creatives. It’s very important to be on the same wavelength to get the best product. That’s really important to me in how I approach commercials. And I’ve had really good luck."
Serendipity certainly came into play with Smith’s Homestore.com campaign, out of TBWA/Chiat/Day. That project was originally intended to be a series of documentary-style ads and a short film. The interview subjects were five individuals with unique domiciles—from a woman living in a tree house in Hawaii, to a married couple that transformed an underground missile silo into their living quarters. The 12-day shoot went off without a hitch, but during the post process things changed. Smith had an abundance of footage, so in the end the director, and editor Jun Diaz of MacKenzie Cutler, New York, pieced together a 60-minute documentary that was accepted into competition at the 2001 Sundance Festival. (Dan Bootzin of Venice Beach Editorial, Los Angeles, the in-house editing arm of TBWA/Chiat/ Day, cut the six Homestore spots.)
Smith and Independent Media executive producer Susanne Preissler expect that some sort of distribution deal will materialize, though nothing firm is in place yet.
Meanwhile, Smith’s latest documentary, tentatively titled The Yes Men, explores the anti-globalization movement evidenced by the recent protests in Seattle. Working with Price and about 10 other collaborators, the director also maintains Zerotv.com, which features Web series and other entertainment content. In the foreseeable future, he will go into production on a narrative film, subject matter of which is under wraps.
With several ad campaigns under his belt, Smith has also begun exploring genres outside the documentary-style spot realm. Among these are the narrative Toyota work, and four Sutter Home spots—including "The Inventive Years" and "The Lost Years"—via Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. Those ads evoke different time periods and offer a wry spin on the ’50s-era educational film.
"I’ve been picking things that are a little different than what I’ve done before," says Smith, in spite of his understanding that, within the spot world, directors are often associated with a single genre. "I’ve always messed around in different styles, so mentally I don’t feel restricted."
He points out that his first movie, American Job, was a narrative film, and he characterizes American Movie as "a total accident." "Sarah and I met Mark, the subject of the film, and just thought it was a good idea for a film. We weren’t thinking of ourselves as documentarians. We consider ourselves filmmakers."
Agency creatives also seem to believe that Smith’s talents are varied. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners art director Sean Farrell and copywriter Colin Nissan worked with Smith on the Pac Bell job, and again on Sutter Home. "When we did the Pac Bell stuff, we wanted that documentary feel, so we turned to him because he had that background," Farrell explains. "We didn’t know what we were going to get, because we were working with actors. But Chris grasped it so quick, and we learned that he could do almost anything. He always has a quick opinion, and most of the time we agree with him. And I think because he came from an independent film and documentary background, he takes a very real, honest approach."
But perhaps the director’s biggest draw is that he’s pleasant, even fun, to work with. "Really, when Sutter Home came up, we were just excited to work with him again," continues Farrell. "He’s the nicest, sweetest person." Nissan sums it up this way: "Sutter Home was an extensive job, so one of our main concerns was finding someone we could work with really well. We knew we could work well with Chris."
