By Robert Goldrich

When SHOOT caught up with Jenny Gadd in May (5/16, p. 5), she had just joined Ogilvy NY as its executive director of content production and was looking forward to serving for the first time as a judge at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

We now circle back to gain Gadd’s reflections on her experience as a member of the Cannes Film Craft jury. She has since settled in at Ogilvy where she oversees the broadcast, film and video production team, as well as business affairs, talent and business operations. Prior to Ogilvy, she was head of integrated production at agency Johannes Leonardo.

SHOOT: What did you take away from your experience judging at Cannes?

Gadd: When I talked to you last, I expressed how honored I felt that I was asked to serve as a judge and how pleased I was to be on the Film Craft category which is certainly close to my heart as a producer.
As it turned out, my experience on the jury exceeded all my expectations. It was a fascinating, inspiring, interesting experience though it was a long and difficult process. Basically we spent six days in a dark room–and those were 12 to 14-hour days. We didn’t see much daylight. But the give and take among the 10 jury members from all over the world was a great learning experience.

What makes Cannes so interesting is that it is truly a global festival. As a result you have some work that would do well on a regional and national basis that doesn’t translate internationally. There were a couple of campaigns that I felt strongly about that just didn’t translate for some of the other jury members. We had interesting, heated conversations at times. But everyone was respectful of one another. I was very impressed with the jury–everyone was super experienced and opinioned in a positive way. We continue to email back and forth as a group, keeping in touch.

SHOOT: Your jury was recognized for what it did as well as what it didn’t do–the latter being the decision not to award a Grand Prix honor in the Film Craft competition. How did that decision evolve?

Gadd: It’s a decision we did not take lightly. We had a more than three-hour conversation that went far past midnight.

The decision should not be seen as a reflection that the overall work wasn’t that good this year. There were strong pieces of work absolutely deserving of Gold in their particular subcategory. We gave more Gold than had been the norm historically. But we couldn’t find that one piece that rose to the top and just stood out from everything else.

The judges were asked to each put forth two pieces of work they thought were worthy of being in the Grand Prix conversation. Going in, you’d think there might ultimately be two or three candidates agreed upon by the judges for consideration. Instead we had seven pieces. We had quite a bit of work that was absolutely Gold Lion worthy in individual subcategories.

SHOOT: How many entries did you start out with in the Film Craft competition?

Gadd: We had over 2,000 entries. We then cut that down to a short list of about 300 and went on to dissect all the work. We also talked extensively about what’s the difference between a Silver and a Bronze Lion, a Silver and a Gold. The Film Craft judges were directors and producers–divided evenly between agency and production house producers. There was one piece which judges were going to move away from because it appeared to some that all the visual effects were done in camera. But from my experience, I thought there was no way they were done in camera. I knew it was CGI. When those situations come up, we can request a behind-the-scenes/making-of video. We took that option and found that the piece was 80 percent CGI. My producing experience saw that was the case and as a result, the piece wound up winning a Lion. There was a new found appreciation of the piece once we saw it was done in CGI and post. It was effects work that didn’t seem like effects work, which made it all the more deserving of a Lion.

SHOOT: What were you able to bring back to Ogilvy from your Cannes jury experience?

Gadd: I was able to share my experiences in a presentation I did for our department in New York. We have, for example, a number of junior producers who had never been to the Cannes Festival. They didn’t know fully what the festival was about. I showed our department a lot of content I had found that describes the festival from the inside and what it means to our industry. I walked them through the process of judging and showed all the Lion-wining work. It sparked a real interesting discussion as to why certain work got Bronze instead of Silver or Silver instead of a Gold Lion and so on. Our producers got to share in the experience and what went into the judging.

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