SHOOT’s fifth annual New Directors Showcase–marked by an evening screening, panel discussion and reception this week (5/23) at the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Theatre in New York–offers a total of 30 helmers (25 individual directors, a three-person team and a directorial duo).
Prominent in the mix are ad agency artisans who have acted on their directorial aspirations, including Jeffrey Morgan, currently a staff producer at Deutsch New York, who made his feature film directorial debut at the recently concluded Tribeca Film Festival with Lillie & Leander: A Legacy of Violence, a documentary that uncovers a family secret of racially motivated mass murders in the early 1900s. Morgan not only directed but also edited and co-produced the feature.
Other 2007 SHOOT New Directors Showcase honorees with agency pedigrees include:
• Geordie Stephens who last year exited his creative director post at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami, to focus full-time on a directorial career, joining bicoastal Tool of North America. He earned inclusion in the SHOOT Showcase based on such work as Keep California Beautiful’s darkly comedic “Mobsters” PSA out of BBDO West, San Francisco. Stephens recently wrapped a :60 Ray-Ban viral video, “Kiss,” for Cutwater, San Francisco.
• Rob Luehrs who signed earlier this year with Santa Monica-based Reactor Films. Luehrs had been on staff at Euro RSCG, New York, for eight years, initially as an art director and then moving up the ranks to creative director of Euro RSCG Tonic. While he continues to be involved creatively in select projects for the agency on a freelance basis, Luehrs maintains a prime focus on his directing career at Reactor. His Nike spec spot “Shutter Speed” was featured in a January installment of SHOOT’s “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery.
• Amy Nicholson who caught the eye of bicoastal/international Hungry Man based on her offbeat documentary Muskrat Lovely, a film which wound up being televised nationally on the PBS series Independent Lens. She has since directed a Homeland Security campaign for BBDO New York and risque Howard Stern on Demand promos via New York ad shop Walrus.
Nicholson made her first career mark on the agency side of the biz, breaking in as an art director at W.B. Doner, Chicago, followed by a brief stint at Y&R, Chicago, and then Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, New York, where she was part of the creative team on the acclaimed “Wendy the Snapple Lady” commercials. Next came tenures at Fallon, New York, and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco. Nicholson later served as creative director at Wieden+Kennedy’s Manhattan office.
• Leonel Fernandez of Big Mama, New York, whose first staff gig was as an art director at Saatchi & Saatchi, Mexico City. He then went to New York to work on a global campaign for Y&R and later landed an art director position at The Bravo Group, New York. Fernandez then pursued film studies at NYU, after which he returned to Mexico to be a cofounder of Watson Films. He recently joined Big Mama.
• And the team of Don & John, a.k.a. Don Shelford and John Knecht of bicoastal/international HSI Productions, who earned inclusion into SHOOT’s Showcase primarily on the strength of their episodic work on the short form series The Arrogant Fake British Rich Guy and Guided Meditation With the Billy Lama for online entertainment network bud.TV via DDB Chicago. Shelford and Knecht first met at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, though they didn’t work as a creative team there. Next, they both moved to Amsterdam where Shelford was a group creative director at Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), and Knecht a writer at ad shop 180. In their spare time, they collaborated on prospective directorial projects.
Team work
Don & John are one of two teams in the Showcase, the other being Three Legged Legs of Green Dot Films, Santa Monica. Three Legged Legs–a.k.a. Casey Hunt, Greg Gunn and Resa Rasoli–scored with GE’s Samurai, a short animation film that is part of GE’s Imagination Theater program out of BBDO New York.
Meanwhile spec fare was prevalent among entrants. Prime examples include director TJ Hall of greatguns:usa for Pentel Pens’ “The Big House”; Creature of The Oil Factory, Los Angeles, with the NHL’s “Batting Cage”; Kirk Duffy for the humorous Schell “Metric” ad; Jeff Aron Lable with Naturalmarket.com’s “Birth”; Robbie Pickering’s Careerbuilder.com’s “Stuck”; Chad Einbinder’s “Jesus” for XM Satellite Radio; Matt Fischman’s “Cockfight” for ESPN; Matt D. Helfgott’s Ameriquest “Brownie” spot; and Nir Bashan of BeachHouse Films whose spec viral “Brand New” for Honda automobiles recently won a Silver Clio.
And this spec fare has translated into real-world jobs. For example, Helfgott garnered “Office” for Holland’s National Job Bank via Amsterdam agency Selmore. “Office” made SHOOT’s The Best Work You May Never See” gallery earlier this month. Similarly Fischman parlayed his spec endeavors into a recent Beck’s assignment for agency Ground Zero, Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, assorted real-world spots are indeed evident on the Showcase reel, including Izod’s “In The Snow” directed by Ben Orisch of HomeNYC; Energizer batteries’ “Aliens” helmed by Philip Boston of Alturas Redfish Films, Venice, Calif.; “Jaime,” a promo for MTV Tr3s network directed by MTV’s Evan Silver; and Six Flag’s “You Are Here,” directed by Ben Grossmann, creative director/visual effects supervisor at The Syndicate, Santa Monica, for Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. headquartered Zimmerman Advertising.
Longer form fare additionally made its Showcase mark. For instance, director Jonathan Bensimon, now with Industry Films, Toronto, scored with his moving Time To Deliver film which opened the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto last summer. And Tony Petrossian of Rockhard Films, West Hollywood, directed an ambitious branded content project, Beijing Ballers, for Nike out of W+K, Shanghai (full story on page 4).
Foreign fare
Spots from outside the United States also made the Showcase. Director Sean Morris landed a spot for Swedish company NOTAR Realty. Aleysa Young of Untitled, Toronto, scored with her Ontario Women Directorate’s “Burger Guy” PSA. Javier Prato directed English Without Barrier’s “Bilingual Cat” spot for audiences in Mexico. Chamaco of Resistance, Venice, Calif., directed Erotika’s Spanish-language “Toys or Juguetes.” And Sophie Gateau of Paranoid US, Los Angeles, registered with her visual tour de force “Cube” for the Vancouver, B.C. Ministry of Health.
Lead sponsors for the Showcase event were harvest, Tool of North America, the West Virginia Film Office, Pump Audio and the DGA. Silver sponsors were Kodak and the Connecticut Film Division. For a full rundown of this year’s New Directors Showcase honorees, see our web reel at www.shootonline.com/go/newdirectorswebreel.
