Some directors are out to reinvent themselves every few years. But Erich Joiner, who has been directing highly acclaimed performance/dialogue driven comedic fare for well over a decade, isn’t one to follow fads–he has simply remained committed to bringing his humorous touch and high production values to projects that he deems smart, interesting and different. “Gosh, maybe some day that’ll be my demise,” he muses with a laugh.
Probably not given his track record thus far. Joiner, whose shop is Santa Monica-based Tool of North America, has had yet another great year, directing well-received work for clients such as Bud Light, Nationwide, MINI Cooper, MTV Canada and California Racing, as well as the droll, tongue-in-cheek “Comfort, it’s what we do” campaign for La Z Boy.
One of his most attention-getting spots, Bud Light’s “But He Has Bud Light” broke during the most recent Super Bowl and won a Bronze Lion at the 2007 Cannes International Advertising Awards. The commercial centers on a driver so blinded by his thirst for Bud Light that he picks up axe- and chainsaw-wielding hitchhikers carrying bottles of the brew despite the obvious risks.
While Joiner, who began his career as an advertising agency creative, is oftentimes called upon to either add to or edit a script, the director says that the script for “But He Has A Bud Light” was so spot-on that it was shot as written. That said, Joiner did make sure to shoot some nuances to provide choices in the edit suite. “To make the best comedy,” he notes, “you need to have a couple of options.”
Capturing those nuances was a challenge given that Joiner shot this particular commercial at night and had to capture a conversation being conducted by the driver and his girlfriend in a moving car. “We’re all sitting on a camera car that’s pulling another car on a trailer, and we have fog effects and night lights, so you do two takes on this little bit of road that we had blocked off, then you cut. Now if I as a director want to try a nuance or to take a slightly different line read or change a word, you have to make this whole caravan of vehicles back up or make a u-turn and reset,” Joiner shares, noting, “It was one of those shoots where you didn’t have the luxury to do as many takes as probably you would have liked.”
In the end, Joiner got what he needed as evidenced by the spot’s success .
The challenge he faced shooting the more recent Bud Light “Opera,” which finds two guys trying and failing to enjoy bottles of Bud Light during an opera performance, was creating the effect of a bottle cracking during a soprano’s soaring solo.
Joiner spent “days and days” trying to figure out the best way to achieve the effect for real. “I would like to say I am a perfectionist, but I also embrace the art of the organic,” Joiner says, noting that preparation beforehand allows him room to play during a shoot.
To achieve the desired effect, the director finally chose to place a small squib in the bottle, which exploded, causing the bottle to crack.
Asked why he didn’t go the computer graphics route, Joiner responds, “I like to do as much of that stuff in camera as I can. People react the way I would like them to react if it is actually happening, and in the end it just looks better.”
Cost is also a consideration. “I think we’re also in a day and age where to do that right in post takes a lot of time and money, and people are definitely money conscious these days,” Joiner says, adding, “and for whatever reason it just seems like a lot of stuff that we do–no matter what it is–has to be on the air very quickly these days. We’re bidding several jobs right now that need effects, and to do them CG-wise, it would take a long time.”
Not that all of Joiner’s work eschews effects. The musical Nationwide “Good Morning” out of TM Advertising, Dallas, has the live-action residents of a suburban neighborhood merrily dancing and singing amongst a cast of animated characters, including the sun and birds. Joiner, who as previously noted is known for his performance/dialogue driven comedy work, was thrilled to land this assignment. “Every couple of months or so it seems like I get to do something that is a little bit different for me, and I am thankful that I can do that work,” Joiner muses. “Nowadays directors are so pigeonholed.”
It takes two
Meanwhile, Joiner also mixed it up this year by co-directing a series of spots for California Racing out of Santa Monica’s Rubin Postaer and Associates (RPA) with director/DP Bob Richardson.
The spots present a visit to the track as a much less troublesome alternative to a trip to Las Vegas where who knows what might happen. One spot titled “Tattoo,” for example, puts a guy in the uncomfortable position of having to explain away a tattoo that reads “Misty” to his girlfriend after a trip to Las Vegas.
Explaining why he and Richardson co-directed the campaign, Joiner says there wasn’t a huge budget, but the creative was strong. So the two men, who are good friends and have enjoyed a long working relationship–Oscar-winning film DP Richardson, who is repped for spots by Tool, has DP’d many of Joiner’s jobs–teamed up.
The collaboration went so well that Joiner and Richardson just co-directed another project, although Joiner wasn’t at liberty to discuss the details at press time. The industry shouldn’t see the pairing of Joiner and Richardson as the birth of a new directing duo, by the way. “The reality is that I have an okay career, and he has an okay career,” Joiner says with a laugh.
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