A field of only 17–nine individual directors and eight teams–made the final cut for the 21st Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase unveiled today at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. This represents the second consecutive year that the Showcase tally has dropped, with 20 directors selected in 2010 and 23 in ’09. This year’s total of 17 is more in line with ’07 and ’08 when 18 and 19 directors were chosen, respectively.
While the numbers have fluctuated a bit, not so has Saatchi’s standard for inclusion. Showcase organizers over the years have affirmed that the annual event is not run as a must-get-to-a-certain-number game. There is no attempt to fill out the Showcase; the mantra has always been to go with the directors thought to be the most deserving, whatever number that amounts to.
Still, there have been changes in Showcase dynamics in recent years, shaped in part by the changing nature of the business. But first, here’s a rundown of those whose work was deemed by the Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide Creative Board as being worthy of 2011 Showcase distinction:
• Tomi D @ Punga of London house Not To Scale earned Showcase inclusion on the strength of a Diesel Sneakers spot titled “Assland.” (Punga is a Buenos Aires studio in which Tomi D, a.k.a. Tomi Dieguez, is partnered.)
• The Daniels–a.k.a. the duo of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert–for the short Dogboarding. The Daniels are with Prettybird in Santa Monica, Calif.
• Neil Dowling and Nils Claus who teamed on the Royksopp music video “Senior Living.” The directorial duo is with Contented Films in Seoul, South Korea.
• The General Assembly, now consisting of Adam Willis and Adam Littke, for Grum’s “Through The Night” music video. Director Ryan McNeill was also a member of The General Assembly team which turned out the Grum clip. McNeill has since gone out on his own and is repped individually by More Media. The General Assembly is with London house Skin Flicks and is repped in the U.S. through Townhall.
• Robin Goode of Giant Films, Cape Town, South Africa, for the Drive Dry PSA “Let’s Date.”
• Jonathan Higgs, who’s handled by Scruffy Bird MGMT in London. Higgs is a member of the British alternative rock band Everything Everything. He gained inclusion into the Saatchi Showcase based on his directing of the Everything Everything music video “Photoshop Handsome.”
• Lernert & Sander of Blinkink, London, who caught the eye of Saatchi judges for the music video “Elektrotechnique” for the Dutch band De Jeugd Van Tegenwoordig.
• Sandro Miller of Cap Gun, Chicago and London, for the short Butterflies Feat.
• Mikey Please of Agile Films, London, who was recognized for his BAFTA winning animation short The Eagleman Stag.
• Polynoid, a collective from Passion Pictures, London, for the short film Loom, which shows the beauty and travails of nature as a moth is caught in a spider’s web. This short earned Best in Show distinction at last year’s SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival. Polynoid–which consists of Jan Bitzer, Ilija Brunck, Csaba Letay, Fabian Pross and Tom Weber–is repped stateside by Blacklist, New York.
• Andreas Roth of Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemberg in Germany for the Dirt Devil commercial “The Exorcist.”
• Andrew Ruhemann and Shaun Tan who teamed on the short film The Lost Thing, a project no stranger to accolades, having earlier this year won the Oscar for Best Animated Short. The short was produced by Passion Pictures Australia. Ruhemann is owner of the overall Passion Pictures; Tan is a noted author and illustrator; The Lost Thing was based on his picture book of the same title.
• Gary Shore of Knucklehead, London, was recognized for “Cup of Tears,” his trailer which inspired a feature film that’s in development. Shore’s roost in the U.S. is Anonymous Content.
• Michal Socha for the computer animated short Chick. Socha is with Platige Image in Warsaw, Poland.
• Tell No One of Skin Flicks, London, for the short film Seaweed. Tell No One consists of Luke White and Remi Weeke.
• Thirtytwo–the team of Dylan Southen and Will Lovelace–for the music video “Let You Go” for the drum and bass duo of Chase and Status. On the roster of Pulse Films, London, the thirtytwo duo is handled stateside by Chelsea via that house’s arrangement with Pulse known as pulse @Chelsea.
• And Daniel Wolfe of Somesuch & Co., London, who was recognized for the Plan B music video “Prayin’,” which was produced by his former roost Partizan. Wolfe is repped stateside by Caviar via that company’s relationship with Somesuch & Co.
Evolving Showcase
As earlier alluded to, there have been changes in certain Showcase dynamics. For instance, commercials not so long ago were prevalent, if not dominant, in the annual Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase. However that norm has shifted dramatically.
Kate Stanners, creative director of Saatchi London and worldwide spokesperson for the New Directors’ Showcase, observed, “Maybe commercials aren’t as experimental and taking risks with young directors as much as in the past.” She noted that directors are turning to other disciplines to serve as career springboards helping them to prove and showcase their talent.
Perhaps it’s not so much about a shortcoming of commercials but rather the opportunities afforded virally and spurred on by the advent of more affordable, accessible technology–including digital cameras, iPads, software and the like–that are opening up more varied forms of content for aspiring directors to show their mettle. Commercials are now just a part of the mix. And in turn the advertising community–both in terms of creating commercials and other kinds of sponsor-driven and supported content–can benefit from tapping into the creative visions and voices of the new breed of director being spawned by accessible outlets and technology.
Tom Eslinger, digital creative director for Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, cited as an example Jonathan Higgs’ Everything Everything music video “Photoshop Handsome.” “It’s a desktop video,” noted Eslinger. “Accessible, affordable technology is spawning this kind of worthwhile experimentation.
“Accessibility has become more common. The iPhone now has a better camera than what I was used to years ago growing up with VHS and trying to cobble something together,” continued Eslinger. “Next year I imagine we’ll see a fair share of stuff from the iPad 2 among all the work we’ll be considering. You can download apps and find all kinds of filmmaking resources. You can get your own studio for under a grand, which is a far cry from the cost of entry when I first got into this business. You don’t necessarily need a production company to get a reel together and showcase your work. Vimeo is in a sense becoming the biggest production company. You can start your own channel. Directors have big followings online. For our Showcase, we find ourselves monitoring Vimeo and who’s trending.”
Eslinger added that the search for new talent now involves different paths. “Social media and online video channels have sliced the time that it takes for new directors to be noticed. Instead of just consuming reels, we throw more and more nets out, but smaller, narrower and more finely woven ones. Several of the [Showcase] directors were spotted through social chatter, discussions on video and film blogs, and the humble ‘old’ viral.”
Stanners concurred, relating, “Before, you were literally discovering talent. But with the Internet and various channels, things work in a different way. You’re editing out the lesser talent and navigating through the content to find the gems.”
Saatchi has kept its finger on the pulse of new talent through various means, including now being in its third year as a sponsor of the bimonthly BUG music video showcase events at the British Film Institute’s Southbank facility in London. Clips are submitted for BUG consideration year ’round and works of interest are relayed to Saatchi for its perusal. The Daniels, for example, were discovered via Saatchi’s relationship with BUG. Saatchi sought out The Daniels and wound up choosing for its Showcase reel a short [the fun, comedic Dogboarding driven by the song “Helena Beat” by Foster the People] rather than the The Daniels’ music video screened at BUG.
Through its network of some 140 offices worldwide and relationships with key online sources, Saatchi at first fashioned an initial lineup of several hundred directors for Showcase consideration–from which the final 17 were selected. Music videos proved to be prevalent this year. Eslinger noted that directors seemed to be experimenting quite a bit with music, deploying different technologies and techniques. He again cited “Photoshop Handsome” in which “the entire band was shot in front of green screen, with clips given to animators and filmmakers online and then reassembled back into the story. It’s a unique way of experimenting, of crowdsourcing.”
Eslinger also pointed to Lernert & Sander’s “Elektrotechnique” music video in which technique and technology were deployed but did not overshadow the communication.
Among the projects that resonated with Stanner was director Wolfe’s “Prayin'” music clip which she described as “an accomplished piece of filmmaking, like a modern-day West Side Story.” Outside the music video discipline, Stanner cited Polynoid’s short film Loom. “At first it looks like a National Geographic clip. It is a thing of beauty with its own rhythm.”
Moby/Vimeo
Separate from the New Directors’ Showcase lineup but in the same spirit of uncovering fresh filmmaking talent, Saatchi & Saatchi partnered with Vimeo and Moby on the “Hello, Future” Music Video Challenge competition. (“Hello, Future” is the overall theme of the 2011 Showcase.)
The brief for the competition was to visualize the concept of “Hello, Future” in the form of a music video inspired by one of three tracks selected from Moby’s new album, “Destroyed.” The winner of the contest, Alberto Gomez, will be offered the chance to work on a project in a key office in the Saatchi & Saatchi Global Network. Gomez is from Mexico.
At the Showcase, the work of the 10 Music Video Challenge director finalists was screened: Gomez, Frank Beltran, David Evan Bowers, Brian McCann, Lindsay MacKay, Antonini Pevny, Oden, Martin Rodahl, Alexy Terehoff and Roland Wittl.
The Music Video Challenge is cut from the same cloth as last year’s contest initiative which partnered Saatchi with aniboom.com to find fresh new animation directorial talent. Yannick Puig won that competition through a combination of audience votes and the assessment of the Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide Creative Board. As the winner, Puig went on to direct a Toyota film for Saatchi & Saatchi LA in Torrance, Calif.
Sampler
Here’s a sampling of some of the 2011 Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase work:
Dirt Devil’s “The Exorcist” directed by Andreas Roth
Plan B music video “Prayin'” directed by Daniel Wolfe:
Dogboarding short, directed by The Daniels:
