User-generated content and contests have made their mark in our fall crop of up-and-coming directors. Consider Keegan Wilcox who responded to a call for entries into Philips’ Tell It Your Way filmmaking competition. His short film Porcelain Unicorn won, thus joining the ranks of shorts directed by notable directors from RSA Films for Philips’ “Parallel Lines” campaign out of DDB London. Furthermore, making the final selection of Wilcox’s film–which topped more than 600 contest entries–was none other than the acclaimed director, RSA Films’ Sir Ridley Scott.
Then there’s Angela+Ithyle, a stop motion animation directing duo who got on the commercialmaking map because they bought Amazon Kindles for each other. Through those Kindles, Angela Kohler and Ithyle Griffiths received a mass email communique from Amazon seeking user-generated spot entries. Angela+Ithyle wound up winning the contest.
Add to our fall mix of up-and-comers another duo who scored at both the AICP Show and in SHOOT’s “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery with distinctly different spec spots; a documentary short filmmaker who’s breaking meaningfully into branded content; and a music video artisan who too is diversifying into the ad arena.
Here’s our fall collection of promising directors to watch:
Sean Dunne
For Sean Dunne, right after college came film school–not in the form of a formal curriculum but rather an education derived from trial by fire, writing, producing and occasionally directing promos for The History Channel and A&E in New York.
A fateful turn of events came in Pittsburgh where he was shooting some promo fare for a History Channel show. On their own time, Dunne and his bare bones crew took on an impromptu project, filming Paul Mawhinney, owner of–but not able to find a viable buyer for–the world’s largest record album collection.
“It makes me nervous to think where I would be today if I didn’t go off to film that guy after reading about him,” said Dunne. “Where would I be today? I made a documentary short about Paul on a fluke. I applied the interview skills I got from working at The History Channel and we struck up a rapport. I was somehow able to get genuine emotions and humanity from a guy who doesn’t normally give much of that out.”
Dunne captured that footage in June 2008, put the resulting documentary on the web in September ’08, and in January ’09, the docu short–titled The Archive–was screened at the Sundance Film Festival.
The Archive also led to Dunne being courted and signed for commercials by Nonfiction Unlimited, a company he aspired to join but didn’t think would be interested in him–at least not for several more years. “All my heroes were there–filmmakers like Albert Maysles, Barbara Kopple and at the time Ondi Timoner. But The Archive accelerated my career journey and I found myself at Nonfiction.”
Right after The Archive, Dunne also found himself with a small but vocal Internet following that was interested in what he would do next. That turned out to be another documentary short, Man in Van, which was about a guy who was forced to move out of his home and live in a van parked in Manhattan.
“It was the opposite story of The Archive where a man had too much and it ruined his life,” said Dunne. “In sharp contrast, the man in the van was happy not having anything.”
Completing what evolved into a self-described “American dream-themed trilogy” of short documentaries involving materialism, happiness, hopes and broken dreams, Dunne next directed The Bowler, a profile of Rocky Salermo who hustled bowling for a living. His life has been marked by booze, women, bowling and a serious gambling addiction.
Collectively this “American dream trilogy” helped Dunne realize a dream of his own, getting the chance to apply his documentary penchant to advertising as he landed and recently wrapped a campaign consisting of three web shorts profiling young National Hockey League star Steven Stamkos for Nike Canada out of Wieden+Kennedy, New York. (See this week’s “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery for more on the first short in this package, Road To Boom-Moment 1.)
Dunne enjoyed the project and wants to take on more advertising assignments. He described the biggest challenge as having to adjust from being an instinctive filmmaker who only had to answer to himself, to being a director who had to express the reasons for his actions and decisions to agency collaborators–while still retaining the instinctive sensibilities that make him an effective documentarian.
“I found myself getting better at expressing my ideas and explaining myself to others, which is a good thing. I enjoyed collaborating with the agency people on Nike.”
Dunne recalled being told years ago that his first ad project would probably come from an agency like Wieden+Kennedy. That educated speculation proved prophetic. In fact, shortly after The Archive came out, prior to Dunne even having representation, creatives from Wieden New York approached him regarding a NASCAR job for ESPN.
“I remember thinking to myself even after I didn’t get that job, ‘These guys really think out of the box. I have no representation, no exposure to the agency world and they sought me out.'”
Fast forward about a year and a half, and Dunne ended up working for Wieden N.Y., recently wrapping the Nike Canada package.
Angela+Ithyle
The directing duo Angela+Ithyle–Angela Kohler and Ithyle Griffiths–arrived on the industry scene in a big way with the playful Amazon Kindle spot “Fly Me Away,” which they conceived while traveling on a multi-national commercial photography campaign for Microsoft.
The commercial photographers created the stop-motion animation spot as an entry in an online user-generated contest, which they wound up winning. They wouldn’t have even known about the competition to begin with if they hadn’t bought Kindles for each other, subsequently receiving a mass email from Amazon seeking user-generated entries.
Amazon went on to air “Fly Me Away” on television and then approached the directorial team to create an entire campaign.
Since then there have been two more Kindle stop motion spots, “Stole Your Heart” and “Mom,” as well as the accomplishment of Angela+Ithyle gaining inclusion into this year’s Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase unveiled at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. The Showcase honor was earned largely on the strength of “Lost Things,” a short/music video for the band A Fine Frenzy.
Soon after making a major initial splash for Kindle, the directing team secured its first production house roost, joining the roster of Workhorse Media, a Santa Monica-based shop headed by executive producer Pola Brown who noted that “Fly Me Away” was an instant favorite of hers. She described the pair as having “style and energy in their work that is very contemporary and I wanted to bring their progressive style to our roster.”
Angela+Ithyle have taken on several projects under the Workhorse banner, including a charming stop-motion “Love Notes” spot for Hellman’s Mayonnaise out of Ogilvy & Mather, New York, depicting short messages written in mayo on and in sandwiches, underscoring that love notes aren’t always written–some are made.
Kohler studied photography at Brigham Young University before launching her commercial photography career in New York, working for such clients as Old Navy, Lexus and Scion. Her fashionable, lifestyle photography is feminine and whimsical while also engaging the audience’s sense of fun and adventure.
Griffiths is a self-taught photographer as well as an artist and musician, working for such clients as David & Goliath, Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi. Griffiths’ camera is a fly on the wall, very much in the moment capturing the triumphs of children and the parallels of adulthood.
Together, Angela+Ithyle see signing with Workhorse Media as a way to connect with new audiences.
“We want to show our viewers something that makes them think, that makes them remember the most enchanting parts of their lives,” reflected Kohler.
Griffiths added, “We want to make work that taps into a sense of play.”
Keegan Wilcox
“What is that?”/”It’s a unicorn.”/”Never seen one up close before.”/”Beautiful.”/”Get away. Get away.”/”I’m sorry.”
These six lines of dialogue represented the challenge issued by DDB London for its “Parallel Lines” campaign promoting Philips’ movie-theater proportioned TV set.
DDB eventually wound up asking select filmmakers from RSA to create and direct shorts that contained that dialogue and which provided a cinematic experience worthy of the Philips television. As chronicled in SHOOT, the initial batch of five short films–directed, respectively, by RSA’s Greg Fay, Carl Erik Rinsch, Jake Scott, and Hi-Sim, as well as Johnny Hardstaff from RSA sister shop Little Minx–reflected a wide range of stories and approaches. The sixth film would also offer a unique perspective–but from outside the RSA family.
DDB London created a contest inviting budding and/or aspiring filmmakers to create a sixth “Parallel Lines” short. This elicited more than 600 entries, culled down to finalists from which the winning film was selected by RSA’s co-founder, filmmaker Sir Ridley Scott.
The winning short was Porcelain Unicorn directed by Keegan Wilcox. The film is a sensitive and moving tale of how a traumatic wartime encounter inspires a man in later life.
The brief encounter is between a German boy and a girl he finds in hiding. The girl lives underground to avoid Nazi persecution during World War II. She shows him a curious toy/artifact–a porcelain unicorn. Nazi soldiers then come on the scene, the girl flees and he takes a beating.
Fast forward to today and the boy is now an elderly man who seeks and finds that girl to return to her the gift of that special unicorn.
Wilcox said the idea was sparked by his grandfather’s war stories as well as eBay’s “Toy Boat” from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, a spot which helped Noam Murro of Biscuit Filmworks earn the DGA Award for commercials in 2005. In the spot, an adult is reunited many years later with a beloved toy boat he had lost as a boy–now found via eBay.
“I love that commercial and it got me thinking of the power of a physical object–like the porcelain unicorn–and how it could make for a good story to explore,” explained Keegan who had to scramble to bring Porcelain Unicorn to fruition.
For one, he didn’t know of the contest until a couple of months in, meaning he had about a month to create and produce his entry. Brainstorming sessions during the course of a week with director Jeremiah Jones–who is both his partner at Southern California shop 100to1 Productions and a former film school classmate at Chapman University–yielded the Porcelain Unicorn storyline.
That left three weeks to make the period piece short, with Wilcox enlisting the help of his frequent collaborator, DP Adam Biddle, the brother of Adrian Biddle, the late DP who had worked frequently with Ridley Scott on commercials and longform. Earlier in his career, the now accomplished Adam Biddle served as a focus puller on Scott-directed spots and films. Now as it turns out, Adam Biddle’s contributions helped Wilcox’s Porcelain Unicorn on several fronts, with the film eventually gaining contest-winning recognition from Scott. “Adam was a tremendous help to me on this short film–more than a cinematographer, he helped me in the art department and in so many other ways,” related Wilcox.
Scott said he selected Porcelain Unicorn because “it had a very strong narrative; a very complete story that was well told and executed.”
Wilcox and Jones maintain 100to1 Productions where they continue to work on varied projects, including local/regional spots for Verizon and Audi. Through a London producer colleague, Wilcox also occasionally directs creatively ambitious commercials for clientele in South Africa, including a Mission Impossible-like thrill ride 60-second spot for a communications company there.
But the chance to do a moving narrative short prompted Wilcox to enter Philips’ Tell It Your Way contest. “The challenge of telling an emotional, evocative story in three minutes was too good to pass up,” he said. “And just the possibility of having Ridley Scott watch my work felt like award enough for me when I entered.”
But actually winning that contest now represents a career break which Wilcox hopes can help him get more narrative opportunities in spotmaking, perhaps opening doors for him in terms of a mainstream commercial production house affiliation and with ad agencies turning out national work.
Wilcox can be certain of at least getting a brief stint at a leading international production company. Winning the Philips contest lands him a weeklong experience working at RSA, accommodations, spending money, and the new Full HD 3D cinema 21:9 Platinum series TV from Philips. Meanwhile Porcelain Unicorn continues to appear on the Philips cinema website and is being promoted globally by Philips.
Contraband
We open on a homeless man who is looking to better himself, raising money every which way he can in order to pay for training as a boxer at a local gym. We get glimpses of his life on the streets, his makeshift sleeping accommodations near train tracks, and the various means he uses to make a living–or in this case to graduate to some semblance of a livelihood in the boxing ring.
We see him being paid for his blood at a blood bank, waiting for and getting a gig as a day laborer, pawning jewelry, even promoting himself as a street fighter which leads to a match in which he’s practicing a crude form of the so-called sweet science in order to get a piece of the wagering that’s been placed on him.
The hard work and his hard life finally pay off as we see him adorned in boxing trunks and a robe, accompanied by his trainer into a boxing ring in the center of a packed arena. He has arrived, in a sense victorious even before the first punch is thrown in the bout.
The spot then cuts to an end tag for HBO’s Boxing After Dark.
This intriguing portrait was conceived, directed, and edited by Liam O’Neil and Jason Koburov who comprise the directorial duo known as Contraband. O’Neil and Koburov made the little over two-minute HBO spec piece, which is entitled “I Still Have A Soul,” under their informal production banner Paradise Square.
Koburov explained that he and O’Neil gravitated towards a boxing story based on their love of the sport. “One of the great things about doing spec work is that you get to explore your passions,” said Koburov. “So we created a story about boxing and the New York scene.”
The HBO piece is Contraband’s second spec spot, the first being “Red Eye,” a promo for the Tribeca Film Festival which earned shortlist status in the spec category of this year’s AICP Show. “Red Eye” was one of 11 finalists that made the AICP Show’s spec shortlist.
O’Neil and Koburov first met one another at RSA Films where they were support staffers–O’Neil serving as a production assistant, Koburov as a media manager.
Koburov still works at RSA Films’ New York shop as a media manager and sales support person, but O’Neil has moved on to serve in freelance production roles.
Upon getting to know each other at RSA, Koburov and O’Neil found they were on the same creative wavelength. This translated into their teaming to executive produce and direct episodes of the web series Rise of the Radio Show, which featured such comedians as Colin Quinn, Dave Attell and J.B. Smoove as well as several notable actors. One of the comedians Koburov and O’Neil ran across during that endeavor was Wil Slyvince, who would later be cast as the homeless, aspiring boxer in “I Still Have A Soul.” The choice proved to be an inspired bit of dramatic casting.
After Rise of the Radio Show was wrapped, Koburov and O’Neil decided to return to where their filmmaking education began, in commercials. Under the Contraband moniker, they directed the alluded to Tribeca Film Fest spec spot, a cinematic spec piece in which we see a prison through the eyes of an incoming inmate. As he is escorted by a guard to his cell, he walks by and glances at other prisoners who are behind bars. Stark black-and-white flashbacks show how each of these men wound up in jail.
As the camera focuses on the new prisoner, a message appears on screen which reads, “Everyone has a story. What’s yours?” Then the Tribeca Film Festival logo appears as the commercial come to a conclusion.
Koburov noted that he and O’Neil received a great filmmaking education simply by being at RSA, getting the chance to see directors work there, even getting feedback from them on their spec pieces.
“Everybody is extremely supportive around here [at RSA Films],” said Koburov, noting that he is also afforded a measure of scheduling flexibility for going out and shooting Contraband’s work. “It’s just been a great working environment here.”
Koburov hopes that the spec work will help Contraband secure an official production house affiliation and dedicated commercial and branded content representation.
Chris Sims
Back in the day–just a scant seven years ago–Chris Sims was very much into filming skateboarding. So when he connected with a number of punk rock bands in Orange County, he was the “guy with the camera” and ended up deploying that camera for some rock documentary work. A couple of the bands hit big, signing with major labels, leading to Sims getting electronic press kit gigs and then eventually music videos.
From there, his music clip lensing career blossomed, among the assorted credits over the years being Daughtry’s “September,” Stone Temple Pilots’ “Between the Lines,” OneRepublic’s “Mercy” and “Marchin’ On,” Tamar Kaprelian’s “New Day,” Jimmy Eat World’s “Big Casino,” and Staind’s “Believe.”
Sims’ music video home, Hollywood-based DNA, has now also become his spotmaking roost. Sims recently broke into the ad arena with “Paul’s Story,” a PSA he directed and edited for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an anti-poaching organization that intervenes to shut down illegal exploitation of marine wildlife and habitats.
The spot, which last month earned inclusion into SHOOT’s “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery, features Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd, reflecting on his life and involvement in the wildlife preservation movement, including a seminal moment when he was with Greenpeace, trying to save whales by putting himself in harm’s way and within harpooners’ range.
The PSA is quite moving, with Sims recalling that while he is not the emotional type, he felt his eye tearing up as it was pressed against the camera eyepiece focusing on Watson as he related that particular Greenpeace experience.
While Sims’ music videos are varied, the Sea Shepherd PSA showcased a different kind of range. On one hand, Sims has directed his share of self-described frenetically visual, at times chaotic music clips.
In sharp contrast, Sims’ PSA simply had Watson looking into the camera (Jessica Young was the DP) and talking directly to the audience, striking an emotional chord.
Sims got the PSA gig through singer Zoli Teglas of the band Pennywise. Teglas told Sims about Sea Shepherd as it related to a breaking story of a Santa Monica eatery illegally serving whale sushi. Sims became interested in the group and saw CNN footage of its boat being smashed by a Japanese whaling fleet.
“I remember reaching out to Zoli and asking him how could I help this organization,” said Sims. “I first thought about going on a boat for them and shooting for a couple of months but they already had people doing that. Then the idea of a PSA emerged, we connected with Sea Shepherd’s media person, got support from Panavision, Kodak and Deluxe, and were able to make this spot.”
The experience has whetted his appetite for more commercialmaking, as he has helmed spec work to help realize that aspiration.
Sims has also put his “down time” from directing to good use, following through on advice from DNA director Marc Webb whose reach spans commercials, videos and features–the latter including (500) Days of Summer and the next Spider-Man movie.
Sims related, “Marc has a background as an editor and he suggested that I do as much editing as possible when I wasn’t directing. I started editing some videos for other DNA directors like Marcus Raboy and it’s helped me better understand film.
“Marc also advised me to study great movies and break them down scene by scene to see what makes them great,” continued Sims. “He loves China Town so I started with that film. Between editing videos and dissecting different movies, I’m having a great learning experience which advances my directing. It’s been great to feel the support, advice, expertise and sharing of the directors here–Marc for his counsel and directors like Marcus giving me the chance to edit during down time in my schedule as a director. Studying art and craft is an ongoing, fulfilling process.”
