Director Kevin Samuels has joined Crossroads Films, bicoastal and Chicago. He comes over from bicoastal/international HSI where he most recently helmed Sprint’s “Boys” for Publicis & Hal Riney, San Francisco, and Home Depot’s “Good Bye” via Spot Makers, Dallas.
Among Samuels’ other directorial credits are commercials for such clients as Blue Cross Healthcare, ESPN and The Discovery Channel. Much of his initial work was marked by a penchant for humor, but he has since diversified into other forms of storytelling. On the comedic front, he scored inclusion in SHOOT‘s “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery in 2004 on the strength of “Lunchtime,”an HSI-produced :30 for Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo out of Cole & Weber/Red Cell, Seattle.
“Lunchtime” begins with a plain, bookish-looking little girl who opens her lunch pail from which she pulls out a huge roll of duct tape. Alone in the playground, she proceeds to unfurl the tape in earnest and with a clear sense of purpose. Next the camera reveals her creation–a spider-like web of sticky tape across pieces of playground apparatus. Her trap complete, the girl sits down on a swing to read a book as she awaits her prey. Soon we hear the school recess bell, immediately followed by the sound of someone hitting the duct tape. Next we see the victim–a cute little boy stuck face first to the web. He tries to wiggle free but to no avail; the struggle leaves him even more tightly trapped. The girl then approaches her captive and puckers her lips. A voiceover intervenes, “Spiders at the Woodland Park Zoo. Watch and learn.”
Samuels made his first industry mark on the agency side of the business, serving as an art director. He held positions at such shops as Saatchi & Saatchi, San Francisco, DDB Chicago, Publicis & Hal Riney, San Francisco, and TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles. He later was a senior VP at Hill Holliday, Boston. In the early 1990s at Publicis & Hal Riney, Samuels met copywriter Matt Smukler. The two later went their separate ways but wound up reuniting and began directing work together. In fact as a directorial duo, Samuels and Smukler were picked by SHOOT as up-and-coming helmers to watch in ’03. They eventually each decided to go solo in their directorial pursuits. (Smukler directs via bicoastal Epoch Films.)
Samuels will be repped by a Crossroads sales team that consists of Tanya Cohen on the West Coast, Helen O’Brien and Janice Harriman in the Midwest, and the company’s head of sales/New York exec producer Sharon Lew on the East Coast.
