Work To Swear By
By Millie Takaki
David Shane recently earned the distinction of having directed the first primetime Emmy Award-winning commercial not to air on television. Bud Light’s “Swear Jar” out of DDB Chicago debuted on the ill-fated Bud.tv online entertainment network and then went on to a healthy viral life of its own.
The spot centers on a workplace in which a “swear jar” has been set up. Each time anyone swears, he or she has to put money into the jar, with the funds collected ultimately going toward buying Bud Light for everyone in the office. This proves to be incentive enough to send expletives flying–pretty much bleeped out in the spot but leaving little doubt as to what’s being said.
“Swear Jar” was Emmy eligible because the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS) decided that work gaining exposure on different platforms–not necessarily television–would qualify for consideration. This recognition of new media resulted in an estimated 20 percent-plus of spot entries coming from the online world. And keeping with that ratio, “Swear Jar” was one of this year’s five Emmy-nominated commercials. The Bud spot set precedents as the first non-televised spot to be nominated for and then to win the Emmy.
“The credit goes to the DDB guys for coming up with the concept in the first place,” said Shane. “I remember reading the script and laughing my ass off. The premise has universal appeal. It resonates with people. Up until a few months ago it was the third most uploaded YouTube video.”
As for his contributions, Shane is self-effacing. “A storyline with potty-mouthed adults is like shooting fish in a comedic barrel.”
However his DDB collaborators regard Shane as key to the success of the spot. Will St. Clair, VP/executive producer at DDB Chicago, affirmed, “The thrust from the beginning was to find a director who would put emphasis on performance and casting vignettes that would come across to an audience–to the point where the viewer would imagine a little bitty story about each of the people in the vignettes. That’s why we went with David Shane as the director.
“The performances he captured felt real and the office situations hold your interest….,” continued St. Clair. “David puts everything he’s got into nailing performances. There are exhaustive callback sessions. He’s never satisfied. And that helped us elevate ‘Swear Jar’ to the spot it became.”
Shane and DDB Chicago associate creative director/writer Karley noted that at one point ‘Swear Jar’ was supposed to be a 2007 Super Bowl spot. Karley explained that CBS rejected the ad in script form.
“At a certain point,” related Shane, “we said ‘fuck it, let’s make ourselves laugh. We had a lot of fun putting those workplace bits for the spot together. Some of it was scripted. Some just sprung from and was built into the moment. The cast had a lot of fun.”
Shane said that “Swear Jar” reflects the fact that advertising is seeing the need to push and edge its way toward entertainment. Besides winning the Emmy, the spot was memorable for Shane in another respect.
“Our DP Ottar Gunderson is a stoic Icelandic guy. He was laughing so hard,” recalled Shane, “that he was shaking and ruining take after take.”
Shane directed “Swear Jar” back when he was at bicoastal/international Hungry Man, his home for eight years before he went over to oposi+ive, New York, in the summer of 2007.
Comedic stretch
While the Emmy Award solidifies Shane’s already well established reputation in comedy dialogue and casting, the director has quietly diversified into more visually driven humor and storytelling fare. At press time, for example, he was about to embark on a Netflix assignment, which is sans any dialogue, for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco.
Also departing from his comedic norm was a Renault spot produced by Wanda Productions, Paris, for BETC Euro RSCG, Paris. The ad focused on a quirky if not deranged chap on a street corner displaying strange mannerisms that turn into his launching into a full sprint across a busy intersection, culminated by an acrobatic backwards flop into a Renault sports car.
“The Europeans were the first to give me a chance to do more visual storytelling and that has led to some of the same opportunities for me in the U.S.,” said Shane who brings agency creative experience and sensibilities to the director’s chair.
He was a creative at TBWAChiatDay, New York, and later at the agency’s London office. Shane moved to Los Angeles upon selling a screenplay. In the Southland, he wrote for television, including contributing to South Park. Shane even landed a development deal at Brillstein-Grey Entertainment which didn’t bear fruit.
Then a former compatriot at ChiatDay, creative director Marty Cooke, asked Shane to help accent the humor in a script for New York agency Merkley Newman Harty. When the director slated for the project, Albert Brooks, fell through, happenstance had the agency turn to Shane to helm the job, which was for Bell South. Shane did just that, working with Hungry Man, and a directing career he hadn’t planned on was off to a fast start.
The directorial momentum continued with an offbeat Hungry Man-produced, Shane-scripted MTV promo campaign, which centered on a Jewish accountant to rock ‘n rollers.
Over the ensuing years, Shane helmed assorted spots for U.S. and international audiences. Among his credits are commercials for such clients as Comcast and the NBA out of Goodby, Opel for 180 Amsterdam, Olympus for The Martin Agency, Richmond, Va., and Animal Planet via BBH, London.
Long-form is also on Shane’s horizon. He is attached to direct 69, a film out of art house studio Vox 3. The movie revolves around an aging baby boomer couple who get the idea to start a line of senior citizen pornography. There’s no actual porn in 69, a comedy that explores each baby boomer’s relationship with one another and their son whose inheritance they’re squandering in the name of entrepreneurial porn.
Shane is additionally slated to direct a thatrical feature for another studio, a project he wasn’t at liberty to discuss at press time.
Whether short or long form, filmmaking for Shane is collaborative. “What I like to do the most is collaborate. Working with smart, facile people is the best.”
Empathy Shane added that his experience on the agency side has helped his collaborative prowess.
“It’s given me a shorthand, I understand the language. It’s also given me a kind of empathy for agency creatives. I remember when I was on the agency side and directors wouldn’t listen to me–how galling that was. It put me in the position of reminding them that: A) I hired them; and B) I wrote this.
“Now as a director I always have a working understanding when I go into a project–an understanding of how hard a job it is that agency people do. I also understand the tyranny of 24 seconds, of trying to tell a story in such little time. But whether you’re working with 24 seconds or two hours, viewers seem to take little moments out of what you do. I try to remember the importance of those moments, of memorable behavior, which I try to bring to my work. Months, even years after watching a film, people retain certain little moments.
Asked if there’s a downside to his agency roots, Shane related, “It can be a double-edged sword. I’m quick in a weird way to default to the agency’s point of view on a job. I need to be careful about that. The truth is that no one has a monopoly on great ideas.”
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More