By A SHOOT Staff Report

SHOOT’s batch of up-and-coming directors this time around includes a pair of directing duos, a Finnish helmer who’s starting stateside, a prolific Funnyordie.com filmmaker making inroads into mainstream spotmaking, a former TBWAChiatDay producer who’s settling into the director’s chair, and a Digital Domain creative director whose directorial debut reflects expertise behind the camera and in front of the computer workstation.
    Here’s our fall collection of promising directors to watch:

Peking    Gregory Mitnick and Nat Livingston Johnson–now the directorial duo known as Peking, which signed this summer with bicoastal/international Station Film–originally met while attending NYU’s Graduate Film School three years ago. Among their mentors is director Laura Belsey who was one of their teachers at NYU and is profiled in this Directors Issue.
    As part of Belsey’s commercial directing class, Johnson and Mitnick turned out two spots–iTunes’ “Lost” and Slim Jim’s “Champs”–which each scored a 2009 AICP Show honor in the Student Film category.
    Peking’s exploits have also extended into such disciplines as web series, music videos, short films, and documentaries. An example of the latter is Roger & Sheryl, which introduces us to the title characters, a sight-impaired man and his wife who live in a small St. Louis suburb. The couple needs to make a pilgrimage to Boston for cornea replacement surgery to restore Roger’s eyesight. The documentary is an intimate portrait of Roger and Sheryl, who are able to make the trip due to the generosity of a philanthropist.
    The alluded to Peking web series is for Coolhunting.com, a website featuring urban artists whose work intersects art, design, culture and technology. Peking has turned out series episodes over the years profiling varied artisans ranging from craftsmen at a hand printing press factory in Sao Paulo, to artists and entrepreneurs whose wares are part of a pop-up flea market in Brooklyn.
    On the music video front, Peking recently wrapped the Glass Ghost clip “Like A Diamond,” a departure from the directors’ other work. The music video is a mesh of portraiture, design, old home movie footage, newly captured VHS images and in-VCR effects.
And at press time, Peking was in postproduction on The Kook, a short film thriller with elements of sci-fi and dark comedy.
    A common thread running through all this work is that it’s driven by Peking’s pitch-through-post mentality. Mitnick and Johnson said that they have been accustomed to writing, producing, directing and posting their own material. They noted that in this working scenario they experimented with offbeat concepts and techniques, took creative risks, and developed an edgier, more personal voice. As they segue into the more mainstream ad world, their interest is to collaborate with like-minded creatives who are making progressive and conceptual content.
    Station Film has embraced Peking and its all encompassing approach. “They create, produce, shoot and post most of their work,” said Station managing partner Stephen Orent of Peking. “Their production value is off the charts and their casting, performances and visual sense are breathtaking.”
    As for the Peking moniker, it stems from Mitnick and Johnson’s separate associations with China. Johnson went to kindergarten in Beijing while his mother was a teacher there. Mitnick lived in Shanghai more recently making films, including some work for the Coolhunting.com video series.
   
Brian and Melanie    Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky met at New York’s School of Visual Arts where they both graduated with MFAs in photography. Cassidy and Shatzky struck up an instant rapport, respected how the other one worked, and started collaborating on projects for school and for films outside of school.
    Their background in photography ingrained in the two filmmakers the belief, said Cassidy, that “singular images are meaningful. They tell a lot and have a great deal of storytelling potential. That has played significantly in our creative approach. We were never really taught the conventional ways of filmmaking. We sort of figured it out on our own, with a foundation in photography.”
    The directorial duo of Brian and Melanie was born and clearly they figured things out in relatively short order. The very first film they had screened publicly, God Provides, was shown at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.
    A portrait of New Orleans and its people during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, God Provides struck a responsive chord with viewers. “We drove down to New Orleans from New York immediately after Katrina hit,” recalled Shatzky. “We had the sense that there were stories to be told that we weren’t seeing on the news or in programs being made. As a result of our rather short trip, we came back with the material that we crafted into a short film which sort of put us on the map.”
    Concurrently Brian and Melanie were directing a short fiction film, The Delaware Project, centering on a woman who’s looking for a connection in life in an isolated bare bones town. The Delaware Project wound up premiering at the Rotterdam Film Festival (where God Provides was also screened) and earned a nomination for its best-of-fest Tiger Award.
    “Our fiction films have a heightened sense of realism and our documentary films tend to have a fiction feel,” related Shatzky. “Somehow that intersection seemed to appeal to Washington Square Films [the N.Y.-based production house which earlier this year signed them for spot and branded content representation].”
    No strangers to advertising, Brian and Melanie earlier turned out a Vegas.com “Bingo” spot which captures Las Vegas life through the happenings in a Bingo hall. The commercial was made as an entry for a CineVegas Film Festival competition. The spot wound up finishing second in the contest while gaining local airtime.
    Already Brian and Melanie have wrapped their first project via Washington Square: a multi-spot campaign for Liveperson.com, an online hub of everyday experts whom the public can tap into for info and counsel. Brian and Melanie took a documentary approach to the campaign which came out of New York agency Hanft Raboy, putting a human face on the experts who come from different walks of life.
    Brian and Melanie continue to maintain their own production banner, Pigeon Projects, for their other endeavors, which include two feature-length films–one non fiction, the other scripted fiction–they currently have in the works. The nonfiction piece, with the working title The Patron Saints, is a documentary exploring life in a nursing home, primarily through the eyes of the youngest resident there.
    Meanwhile at press time, Brian and Melanie were awarded and about to embark on another job at Washington Square, a multi-spot Ad Council campaign promoting men’s health for Grey, New York.

Vesa Manninen
    Finnish director Vesa Manninen has made his first foray into the American ad market, recently joining the roster of The Institute for the Development of Enhanced Perceptual Awareness, a Venice, Calif.-based production house founded by director Michael Bay and exec producer Scott Gardenhour.
    Born and raised in the small town of Raahe, Finland, Manninen recalled there wasn’t much to do but go to the cinema theater he lived next to as a kid. “It was my window to the world,” he said.
    Manninen took an unlikely path to climbing through that window. “My hometown is even far away from Finland’s capital, Helsinki. We were pretty isolated so wanting to become a filmmaker seemed like a silly dream–but it wasn’t silly to me.”
    Manninen began drawing his own comic books at an early age and started performing in bands. He found comic books to be a discipline that helped hone his storytelling sensibilities, which he furthered by making short films with VHS and 8mm cameras.
    Manninen then got his formal education, studying film at Finland’s Turku University, getting classic traditional training in documentaries and writing. “I graduated but it was depressing as to how difficult it was to get into the industry,” he related. Then it occurred to him that he should complement his traditional filmmaking education with one rooted in modern technology, leading him to the postproduction community. He moved up the ranks, working at various shops before eventually becoming an in-house director at Helsinki post house Talvi Digital.
    Opportunities began to emerge for Manninen who became active in music videos and spots. He moved over to the production house side in Finland, at Grillfilms and then Jojimbo in Helsinki. The director also spread his wings internationally with an affiliation at Bazeleus Production, Moscow.
    For the Russian market, Manninen started to turn out notable spots for such clients as Juicy Fruit, Snickers, and Hrusteam crunchy snacks out of BBDO Moscow. The Snickers piece, titled “Heretic,” combines visual storytelling and humor in a rich period piece that takes us back to the year 1467. During this medieval time, we see a man about to be executed for insisting that a Snickers Hazelnut candy bar exists. He is given one last chance to renounce this declaration but refuses to do so, causing the head cleric-like character to brandish him a heretic, at which point a seemingly disinterested king decides the man’s fate with a thumbs-down. Meanwhile just outside the square, we see a villager thoroughly enjoying a Snickers Hazelnut bar. “Heretic” wound up winning first prize in art direction at the 2007 Moscow International Advertising Competition.
    A year later, also for BBDO Moscow, Manninen directed Hrusteam’s “Ice Battle” in which a tiny band of warriors looks like it is about to be vanquished by a vast armada. But the leader of the small group is confident of victory as his adversaries laugh at such a prospect. The leader of the fledgling band of soldiers, though, turns out to be right as he chomps down on the crunchy Hrusteam snack food, causing the icy floor beneath the armada to crack and give way. “Ice Battle” scored the Grand Prix at Russia’s ’08 AdProfit Awards.
    Manninen’s Finnish ad fare includes jobs also marked by a blend of storytelling, visuals and comedy, the latest being a spot in which a man uses hummingbirds for dental hygiene. The fastidious hummingbirds clean the gent’s teeth but pose logistical problems in terms of their maintenance within the confines of a house. Finally there’s the realization that he doesn’t need the winged creatures after all with the introduction of the Omron electric toothbrush.
    The Institute’s Gardenhour was attracted to Manninen’s work, citing one of the director’s early pieces, a short film called The Gig in which a would-be bank robber bungles the job to the point where he can’t even get through the bank’s front door to begin with. “I saw simplicity in the work–a director who could keep the camera quiet and let the characters and the stories evolve,” assessed Gardenhour. “The same characteristics are also in Vesa’s bigger work. Plus he knows the efficiencies of scale, having to deal with extremely challenged budgets that are more challenged than even those in the U.S. Having a director who is disciplined, talented and efficient has become increasingly important in today’s market. And he provides us the rare combination of great storytelling and visual sense along with comedy. He very much strikes us as a director who fits our m.o. of a talent who can go from commercials to longer form and back.”

Drew Antzis
    At press time, Drew Antzis had just been awarded a client-direct campaign for Google, which he will direct via Oil Factory, the Los Angeles production house he signed with earlier this year for spot representation.
    Perhaps best known as one of the most prolific filmmakers on the popular Funny or Die website, Antzis is no stranger to the advertising biz, having collaborated in recent years with agencies that have gravitated towards him for branded content based on his viral comedy work.
    For example, he has done humorous viral branded content pieces for the likes of Norelco via Carat, New York, and Eclipse Gum for Tribal DDB Worldwide, Chicago.
    The Eclipse viral is an improv show parody in which performers pretend they are on a cave expedition–their problem being that the lead explorer has incredibly bad breath, which is inescapable in the tight quarters of a narrow underground cave.
    Antzis has been a contributor to funnyordie.com, the site launched by actor/comedian Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay, from the outset, co-directing with McKay the viral hit short The Landlord (starring Ferrell) in March 2007. Since then Antzis has some 70-plus comedy virals to his solo directorial credit that have played on Funny Or Die, including the parody Sex Tape starring Eva Longoria; a musical spoof of the show Intervention featuring series star Kristen Chenoweth; a spelling bee video featuring Fergie; and a humorous sketch starring Natalie Portman and Rashida Jones touting puppies as a panacea for the global economic crisis.
    Antzis has also both written and directed some select Funny or Die projects, including a short about a eulogy punch-up writer, and a spoof spot for Credit Crunch Cereal, which offers an offbeat take on how a married couple is coping with the troubled economy.
    The initial connection with Funny or Die sprung from Antzis’ earlier life as an improvisational performer. He studied improv in Chicago at both Second City and Improv Olympics in the late 1980s. There he met another improv artist, McKay, who went on to become head writer at Saturday Night Live and then a director, first doing digital shorts and then features, including such Ferrell vehicles as Anchorman and Step Brothers. McKay saw some short-form work directed by Antzis and asked him to take on a viral for Funny or Die in ’07. That effort–The Landlord, in which a little girl who’s a landlord terrorizes behind-in-rent tenant Ferrell–helped put Antzis on the web comedy map.
    “Good comedy isn’t easy to pull off but I’ve managed to do it online and am excited over getting the opportunity to do it on television,” said Antzis, “where you have the challenge of constraints in terms of the time format and in what you can say and do on TV as compared to the Internet.”
   
David Adam Roth    David Adam Roth’s first real-world spot on the heels of notable spec efforts is a PSA for WHY, a nonprofit organization designed to help in the fight against hunger. Titled “Desperate,” the spot for San Francisco agency Duncan/Channon is this week’s entry in SHOOT’s “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery. It’s an auspicious, poignant debut for Roth who earlier this year signed with Los Angeles-based Boxer Films.
    Roth’s alluded to spec directorial work had its roots at USC where he earned an undergraduate degree in film production. While studying there, he got his spec fare underway, ultimately finishing it during his spare time during a three-year tenure at TBWAChiatDay, Los Angeles, moving up the ranks there from intern during his last year at USC to landing a job at the agency as a production department assistant before being promoted to production coordinator, assistant producer and eventually a producer. Roth served in the latter role for about a year and a half. He produced on the agency side such work as a package of animation spots out of Acme Filmworks, Hollywood, for Principal Financial Group, and an Infiniti job directed by Matthias Zentner of foreignfilms, New York.
    The experience at TBWAChiatDay made for an invaluable education as he learned from senior producer Guia Iacomin, executive producer Elaine Hinton and head of broadcast production Richard O’Neill, among others. Roth also gained access to different creative and filmmaking talent.
    “You have to see a lot of work as an agency producer,” said Roth. “The biggest resource a producer brings to the table is knowledge about different people out there and emerging techniques. I got to meet and see the work of a lot of talented people–not just directors but also editors, sound designers, musicians, DPs. I got to draw from their experience and creativity, and found a base of people I liked and who I could go to for different aspects of a project.”
    Roth’s spec endeavors as a director include Nissan’s “Pencils” and “Improve.” The latter :30 puts a Nissan Z through its paces along a Gods Must Be Crazy-like obstacle course. Meanwhile “Pencils” adeptly follows the writing tool from the design lab at Nissan to a PGA Tour putting green, offering affirmation that the automaker’s passion “feeds your passion.”
    The director’s latest spec spot is Kahlua’s “Trunk” which focuses on a woman entering a parking garage. Upon reaching her car, she finds a more liberated version of herself in the trunk, hands over the keys to her clone and the spot closes with the tag, “Let Your You Out.”
   
David Rosenbaum    Interning in the commercial division of Venice, Calif.-based Digital Domain (DD) represented a wonderful education for David Rosenbaum. He had summer internships in 2001 and ’02 while taking a break from his duties as a full-time student at Syracuse University’s School of Visual Arts.
    Seemingly mundane internship tasks opened up new worlds to him at DD, a prime case in point being his having to organize the 3/4-inch tape library back in the day. “I got the chance to watch the reels of David Fincher, Mark Romanek, Eric Saarinen, Jason Reitman, Kinka Usher and other great talents. It was inspiring, particularly to someone who had his own directorial aspirations.
    After graduating from Syracuse, Rosenbaum eventually landed a job as a commercials coordinator/assistant at DD in ’03. He demonstrated some design acumen and moved his way up the ladder, serving as a graphic designer who helped build the DD website. In late ’04, Rosenbaum became an art director at the studio, later moving into pre-visualization for commercials. In ’08, he was named to his current DD capacity of creative director, working on campaigns for the likes of Honda, Gears of War and Lincoln. Most recently, Rosenbaum completed pre-vis work as a lead artist for Tron: Legacy.
    Akin to when he got to watch their work as an intern, Rosenbaum’s education reached greater heights at DD as he got to actually collaborate with filmmakers such as Fincher, Carl Erik Rinsch, Joseph Kosinski and Nicolai Fuglsig. “I worked with them, talked about composition, lenses, storytelling,” related Rosenbaum. “When I was in pre-vis, we would make a form of the spot in the computer first, which made our discussions and key in order to ensure that the pre-vis represented their vision for the project.
    “About four or five years ago,” continued Rosenbaum, “I worked for the first time on a commercial for Fincher. Since then I’ve worked on all of his commercials through Digital Domain. I was also fortunate to work with him on Zodiac and Benjamin Button. Seeing him work and working with him has been a great gift.”
    Rosenbaum received another great gift recently, the opportunity to pitch himself as a director for a Lincoln job out of Team Detroit. He had worked on the past Lincoln campaign for the agency with directors Rinsch and Kosinski. “When the next one came down the pipeline, the agency gave me a shot.”
    Rosenbaum wound up being awarded his first spot as a director, a :30 for the Lincoln MKS titled “Cleaner, Faster, Smarter.”
    The Team Detroit creative brief called for the commercial to show off the MKS’ technology by bringing the viewer inside, then outside the car in different ways. Rosenbaum did just that, directing a one-day live-action shoot of the MKS traveling at a high rate of speed, and then collaborating with his team at the DD studio, including motion graphics artist Jake Sargeant, to highlight the car’s engineering, beauty and science through seamless transitions between the interior (including design of the dashboard graphics) and exterior of the vehicle.
    “Cleaner, Faster, Smarter” underscores Rosenbaum’s comfort level as a director not only behind the camera but in front of a computer workstation as he brings multiple tools and resources to bear on his work.
    While serving as DD creative director remains his full-time gig, Rosenbaum hopes more directorial opportunities emerge for him. Such opportunities, he observed, help him apply the lessons he has learned from notable filmmakers over the years.
    Asked what lesson has been most valuable to him, Rosenbaum responded, “Probably the biggest gift from some of the great directors I’ve been able to observe is the art of the pitch–how to pitch and explain ideas so that they stand out from others and inspire people. It still all comes down to the idea.”

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