The transition to the advertising arena for feature filmmaker Drake Doremus has been relatively seamless and just as lauded as his theatrical fare. In 2011, Like Crazy marked Doremus’ second feature in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival; the romantic drama which chronicles how wonderful and at the same time devastating first love can be went on to win Sundance’s Grand Jury Dramatic Prize.
The next year, Doremus made his first foray into the ad discipline with Intel/Toshiba’s The Beauty Inside, an episodic social film on Facebook featuring a male protagonist who wakes up as a different person every day before finally falling in love. Viewers auditioned via web cam to help portray the lead character. Produced by B-Reel for agency Pereira & O’Dell, San Francisco, The Beauty Inside won three Grand Prix honors (Film, Branded Content & Entertainment, and Cyber) at the 2013 Cannes International Festival of Creativity. The Beauty Inside also scored a Daytime Emmy Award and Best Branded Content honors at The One Show.
Prior to The Beauty Inside, Doremus hadn’t given much thought to diversifying into spots and branded content. B-Reel approached him exclusively with the project and he was immediately intrigued, helping to put together a pitch and formulating a directorial vision that ultimately won him and B-Reel the assignment.
Acclimating himself to advertising wasn’t too great a reach for Doremus as it turned out. “The Beauty Inside was a feature film in my view,” observed the director. “I attacked it that way from a storytelling and emotional standpoint. That’s why I continue to pursue branded content–for the storytelling opportunities it presents.”
Even as he has since moved into :30s with campaigns for Samsung Galaxy for Cheil Worldwide and Google out of Autofuss, Doremus has stayed true to his approach. “I tackle :30s like they were mini-features or shorts. Perhaps that’s from not knowing any better but it works for me. I don’t want to cut back actor performances just because we’re working in 60 or 30 seconds. I want performances to unfold organically and then take the best of that and bring it to the commercial.”
A good case in point is Google’s “Fear Less,” a SHOOT Top Spot of the Week last month. The commercial introduces us to glassophobia, anxiety over or a fear of public speaking–and the lad who has it yet still has to make a speech in front of his class. Deploying his Google Nexus 7 tablet, the boy accesses great historic speeches, Colin Firth’s performance in The King’s Speech, and assorted other resources that help him feel more comfortable talking before an audience. A brief message from mom–“if you’ve changed one mind, you’ve succeeded”–also provides inspiration as he embarks on his big day in class. The warm, humorous, tug-at-the-heartstrings piece ends with the boy delivering a rousing speech which elicits applause from his classmates, including a girl who catches his eye. This leads to his embarking on a quest to tackle yet another fear when his next query via tablet is, “How do I ask a girl out?”
This is one of three Doremus-directed spots in a Google package from San Francisco agency Autofuss. The other two commercials are yet to debut.
“Again you don’t want the performances to feel like they’re cut down,” said Doremus of the Google campaign. “The creatives at Autofuss and I were on the same page all along. We wanted to push things, wanted to stay away from clich๏ฟฝs. We set out to get the best, fullest, richest performance we could. I had a lot of conversations with the editor [Brian Lagerhausen of Beast San Francisco] about the performance, style, cut points so that the final performance in the commercial had a full range to it.”
The biggest adjustment from features to advertising, assessed Doremus, has been learning to deal with clients and agencies. “I’ve enjoyed that collaborative process thus far–the agency creatives have been very open-minded. It’s also helped that B-Reel has been supportive. We’re like-minded–the shared priority simply being to do good work.”
Another benefit realized by Doremus in commercialmaking has been the opportunity to work with other artisans such as cinematographer Sean Stiegemeier. When his feature DP (John Guleserian) was off doing other movies, Doremus wound up connecting with Stiegemeier for branded content and spots.
Sundance trio As alluded to, Like Crazy was the second feature Doremus had in Sundance’s Dramatic Competition. The first came a year earlier when his Douchebag was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize.
This year marked the third time Doremus has premiered a film at Sundance, the latest being Breathe In starring Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce and Amy Ryan. Jones plays a foreign exchange student who arrives in a small upstate New York town and challenges her host family’s relationships and alters their lives.
Breathe In continues its run on the festival circuit and is slated to open wide theatrically in the U.S. next March.
This leaves a window for Doremus to currently take on ad assignments via B-Reel. “I’m looking to do more branded content,” he related. “I find the storytelling to be inspiring and rewarding. B-Reel has opened a new door for me as a filmmaker. Going to Cannes, seeing so much great work and having The Beauty Inside win three Grand Prix honors was an incredible experience.”
Doremus’ childhood experience practically thrust him into the entertainment industry, his mother, Cherie Kerr, being a founding member of The Groundlings improv group in Los Angeles. At the age of 12, Doremus began directing and performing improv.
“I got into creating stories–that was my passion,” said Doremus who dropped out of high school in his senior year to make short films. This led to his big break–being accepted into the American Film Institute at the age of 20. “Studying and learning at AFI was a life-changing experience,” he affirmed.
Doremus graduated from AFI in 2005 and said he has been “grinding” ever since. “You have to grind and strive to get the kind of work you want to do and feel passionate about. It’s a constant process.”
His work in advertising has helped in that process. Doremus observed that working on commercials and branded content with its tight turnaround time has helped to make him “a more decisive filmmaker. In commercials, you have to be more decisive, a bit more opinionated, push your beliefs because you’re dealing with more voices. You have to believe in your instincts.” Out of the Furnace was edited by David Rosenbloom who was nominated along with William Goldenberg and Paul Rubell for a Best Editing Oscar in 2000 for The Insider directed by Michael Mann.
Cooper said of Rosenbloom, “He’s forgotten more about editing than I’ll ever know. I don’t like editing to feel like my fingerprints are all over it. It should be about the characters and their world. David is great at that. I don’t want it to be about how clever Scott is with the camera. There are directors who are so technically astute that sometimes you feel them.”
Cooper’s human-centric filmmaking driven by story, character and behavior is rooted in his youth. “At the University of Virginia, my father was taught two years of English by William Faulkner. I grew up reading Faulkner, Hemingway, the Russians–all who wrote about the human condition. I became an actor and got to know Robert Duvall, a mentor and close friend. He urged me to write and then direct.”
Cooper has an affinity for directing only work he’s written. He was nominated for a WGA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay on the basis of Crazy Heart, which also earned a nomination for Best First Screenplay from the Independent Spirit Awards. Crazy Heart won the Spirit Award for Best First Feature in 2010.
