Paul Anderson, the British-born feature director best known for helming actioners Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon, and Soldier, has signed with bicoastal HKM Productions to direct commercials. While he emerged from more modest filmmaking beginnings as a writer and low-budget filmmaker, Andersons last three features are visually impressive films with extensive layers of computer-generated effects.
Anderson, 33, chose to sign with HKM because he wanted to delve into commercials and felt his style would complement the HKM cast of directors. Im something slightly different for them, he said, and I wouldnt be in competition with the people they already have.
After meeting with HKM founding partners, directors Graham Henman, Michael Karbelnikoff and CEO Tom Mickel, Anderson signed in late December, just before the Christmas holiday. Mickel said that Andersons experience with both actors and effects makes him an asset to the companys roster. In his feature films, Anderson has worked with such actors as Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Kurt Russell, Gary Busey, Jude Law and Sadie Frost.
Anderson noted, A lot of my visual style has come from the influence of commercials. For Event Horizon, Anderson worked with DP Adrian Biddle, and on Soldier, Anderson worked with DP David Tattersall. Collaborating with Biddle and Tattersall, who also work on commercial shoots, inevitably led to spot shoptalk that further piqued Andersons interest.
Anderson mentions Hong Kong transplant John Woo as another example of a feature director adding spotmaking to his cinematic palette (via bicoastal A Band Apart.35mm). Anderson felt that Woo summed up the possibilities afforded to feature directors in comments made after he finished the Nike spot. For [Woo], it was an opportunity to experiment with slightly different techniques. And certainly thats something that really appeals to me as well.
After graduating in 1987 from Englands Warwick University with a film degree and an M.B.A., Anderson wrote for the British dramatic TV series El Cid from 88 to 92. While still in school, Anderson helped to establish Fred Bear (a pun on threadbare), a film cooperative whose members switched roles on the set to complete film projects. In 91, with the help of co-op members, Anderson directed The Spiral Cage, a documentary about a comic book artist who overcame some effects of spina bifida through the practice of Buddhist chanting. In 92, Anderson, again with the assistance of Fred Bear, directed Speed, a television drama about special-order car thieves. (The Keanu Reeves vehicle of the same name was released two years later.)
Anderson hit the stateside scene with Shopping, a film that played at Sundance in 1994 and has generally been regarded as Andersons best (and most personal) film. Anderson acknowledged that, though he is a former writer, his post-Shopping films have largely been visually driven.
Anderson would like to use visuals and computer-generated effects in his commercial work. Mickel said that was another appeal Anderson had for HKM: A lot of directors are experimenting [with this technology]; I think hes beyond that. Known also as an action director, Anderson would like to work in the same vein in his commercial work.
Anderson is currently involved in a long-term project to remake Roger Cormans cult film Death Race 2000 (Corman produced the film and Paul Bartel directed). The project is incubating while Anderson begins the screenplay and an unnamed team of digital gurus develop technology that will enable the filmmaker to render action and complex backdrops without building extensive sets. Anderson expects the project will begin filming in two years, and he said he is simultaneously working on screenplays for projects with no explosions, no effects that he would like to direct after the Death Race remake.
With no long-form shooting scheduled in the near future, Anderson said he would like to concentrate on developing his commercial career and that he would not fall into the trap of feature directors who sign and then disappear into new movies. He also emphasized that he would like to incorporate new technology into his commercial work when appropriate.
Mickel explained that HKMs strategy will be to take advantage of Andersons hiatus from feature directing. Itll give us the time to develop his career properly and not to rush into things, he said.
