When director Jeffrey Karoff was bidding to break into commercialmaking in 2001, he had a stellar reel of corporate films for the likes of Mercedes-Benz, IBM, Toyota, Visa, Hewlett-Packard, Sony and Xerox. Two spots were culled from his Mercedes work and aired in the New York market to promote the Mercedes Tri-State Dealers. Separately he fashioned spec commercials from his other corporate films to showcase in a reel designed to elicit interest from production houses and ad agencies.
While that tact proved successful, today he probably wouldn’t have had to do so much repurposing in an increasingly longer form/branded entertainment-conscious marketplace. The unaltered corporate films themselves would have arguably caught the fancy of agencies and production companies more readily now than they would have five years ago.
Yet all’s well that ends well–even though Karoff’s career is still just beginning. He has not only firmly established himself in spotmaking via Backyard, Venice, Calif., but also made his mark in branded content, having earlier this year helmed Rusty Dogs, the first short in a series of films for Sea-Doo out of Cramer-Krasselt, Milwaukee.
The action/adventure storyline of the nearly seven-and-a-half-minute Rusty Dogs centers on an international crime in the making on a boat. The villains’ plot is thwarted by a band of former Navy Seals who operate Rusty’s, a watercraft service shop in the harbor. The rescue operation is replete with a good guy on a Sea-Doo jet ski, a high-speed chase and some tongue-in-cheek humor. The heroes use largely tools of the watercraft shop trade like pliers, wire and an audio loudspeaker system to accomplish their mission. The short was at one point described by Karoff as “Kelly’s Heroes meets MacGyver.”
Karoff found his formal film education–including training in the American Film Institute’s directing program–as being most helpful in helping to realize the creative vision for Rusty Dogs. “At AFI the importance of story was stressed to every person, no matter what the discipline he or she was being trained in. You must be true to the story. Additionally structure and the arc of the story were emphasized. With that and all my subsequent shooting experience, I was well prepared to take on the Sea-Doo project.”
Helping him along was the approach by the agency and client, as well as the chance to again collaborate with DP Anghel Decca–whom Karoff has worked with on assorted spots and corporate films–and the expertise of producer Danielle Schillling-Lovett who was brought into the project. “Danielle, who did House of 1,000 Corpses, helped us work within a limited budget given her independent filmmaking bent and experience,” says Karoff.
Karoff also praises BRP (Sea-Doo’s parent company) and Cramer-Krasselt for adhering to the self-imposed rule that the film “wasn’t a running package of Sea-Doo vehicles. The story is the star–not the jet skis.
“Not once,” says Karoff, “did I hear, ‘We’re concerned about how our product looks. Can you frame the Sea-Doo jet skis better?’ Blair Stribley [Backyard executive producer] and I had joked going into the shoot that we would have to wear t-shirts that read, ‘This is not a commercial.’ But we didn’t need that. The client and agency really got it.”
Meanwhile the past year has been heavy in car commercials for Karoff but they’re very much people-based and not of the sheet metal variety. At press time he had wrapped a Lincoln shoot for Young & Rubicam, Detroit. This came on the heels of a real-people Lincoln campaign for Uniworld, New York. Furthering his automotive reputation was the high profile General Motors campaign of 2005 from McCann Erickson, Detroit, in which the public could get employee discounts when purchasing new GM vehicles. “To have employees talking into the camera isn’t the most dynamic proposition–it can be like quicksand,” observes Karoff. “But my approach was to play off of the stiffness and sometimes awkwardness of real people, to embrace that and make it work for us, while placing them in a visually interesting environment. The pairing of the naturalism of people with a visually unusual designed scheme seemed to work.”
Indeed right after the GM spots broke, sales skyrocketed. Yet while car clients have been prominent in the mix for Karoff as of late, he has been active in other storytelling genres. For example, he directed several tug-at-the-heartstrings films about children and schools for the Robin Hood Foundation, a non-profit philanthropic organization that supports education, combats hunger and facilitates job placement for the impoverished in New York. Karoff’s 70mm films were screened during this year’s annual Robin Hood fund-raising event at the Javits Center.
“It was a gratifying experience to see the films play and money being raised for such a worthwhile cause,” says Karoff. “Conveying humanity in filmmaking–short or long form–is something I strive for.”
House Calls Via TV and Streamers: A Rundown of The Season’s Doctor Dramas
No matter your ailment, there are plenty of TV doctors waiting to treat you right now on a selection of channels and streamers.
Whether it's Noah Wyle putting on his stethoscope for the first time since "ER," Morris Chestnut graduating to head doctor, Molly Parker making her debut in scrubs or Joshua Jackson trading death for life on a luxury cruise, new American hospital dramas have something for everyone.
There's also an outsider trying to make a difference in "Berlin ER," as Haley Louise Jones plays the new boss of a struggling German hospital's emergency department. The show's doors slide open to patients Wednesday on Apple TV+.
These shows all contain the DNA of classic hospital dramas โ and this guide will help you get the TV treatment you need.
"Berlin ER"
Dr. Suzanna "Zanna" Parker has been sent to run the Krank, which is only just being held together by hardened โ and authority-resistant โ medical staff and supplies from a sex shop. The result is an unflinching drama set in an underfunded, underappreciated and understaffed emergency department, where the staff is as traumatized as the patients, but hide it much better.
From former real-life ER doc Samuel Jefferson and also starring Slavko Popadiฤ, ลafak ลengรผl, Aram Tafreshian and Samirah Breuer, the German-language show is not for the faint of heart.
Jones says she eventually got used to the blood and gore on the set.
"It's gruesome in the beginning, highly unnerving. And then at some point, it's just the most normal thing in the world," she explains. "That's flesh. That's the rest of someone's leg, you know, let's just move on and have coffee or whatever."
As it's set in the German clubbing capital, the whole city... Read More