Commercial production company Institute has added award-winning filmmaker Alison Klayman to its directing roster. Known for documenting some of the most prominent people and stories of our time, Klayman has been named by The New York Times as a Director to Watch, and her work has been shortlisted for an Academy Award and has received multiple prizes including from the Sundance Film Festival, the Peabody Awards, and the duPont-Columbia Awards.
Klayman’s film work tackles big issues, big stakes, and big personalities, even while she brings viewers into these worlds through an intimate lens. She has profiled the eponymous Chinese artist and activist in Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, which earned a Special Jury Prize at Sundance and put Klayman on The New York Times’ list of 20 Directors to Watch; singer Alanis Morrisette in Jagged; and right wing strategist Steve Bannon in The Brink. Klayman has also chronicled the rise and fall of the brand Abercrombie & Fitch in White Hot; the pervasiveness of prescription stimulants in Take Your Pills; and the WNBA’s New York Liberty in Unfinished Business.
Klayman brings the same effortlessly personal approach, powerful visual style, and genuinely emotional story beats to her advertising work. She has directed commercials for numerous major brands including lululemon, HP, HBO, Bose, Brawny, 3M, and MorningStar Farms. In the process she’s directed diverse talent from actor Ed Burns, to hip-hop legend Stic from Dead Prez, to Fortune 50 CEO Meg Whitman. Prior to joining Institute, Klayman was repped most recently in the commercialmaking space by Washington Square Films.
Klayman is already working on her first project with Institute, a short film that will chronicle Every Woman’s Marathon, an all-women marathon taking place in November 2024 in Savannah, Georgia.
Klayman noted that she’s known Institute’s founders–filmmaker and photographer Lauren Greenfield, and producer Frank Evers–as well as company EP Sean Lyness for more than a decade and enjoys a great rapport with them. “I’ve been so impressed watching the evolution of Institute over the past few years. I love that the company’s roster and creative output continues to expand and progress, while still incorporating its roots. Now that I have almost a decade of experience in the ad space, I’m excited to take my commercial work to the next level with people who I feel understand my documentary background, have the same storytelling sensibilities and ethical sensibilities, and know how to creatively apply all of that to work with brands.”
Greenfield, creative director of Institute, said, “Alison is a singular storyteller and I’ve been a huge fan of her work for years. With her strong foundation in documentary film, she brings an authentic and curious approach to advertising that really connects with viewers and elevates the narratives. Alison is a fantastic fit for the Institute roster and we are thrilled to be collaborating moving forward.”
Based in Brooklyn, Klayman is also a member of the DGA, BAFTA, and AMPAS. She earned a DGA Award nomination for the aforementioned Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.
Apple’s “Fuzzy Feelings” Wins Primetime Commercial Emmy Award
Apple’s “Fuzzy Feelings” won the primetime commercial Emmy this evening (9/7) during the first of two Creative Arts Emmy Awards ceremonies being held this weekend in the Peacock Theater at LA Live. The yuletide film out of TBWAMedia Arts Lab was directed by Lucia Aniello via Hungry Man in tandem with stop-motion animator Anna Mantzaris of Passion Pictures.
“Fuzzy Feelings” introduces us to an office worker by day and stop-motion artist by night. As an employee, she works for a boss whom she’s grown to hate. So at night, her stop-motion creations put him in dire straits. The young woman makes her stop-motion fare by deploying the iPhone 15 Pro camera and a MacBook Air with M2 to edit it. However, when the woman's day job takes a turn and she starts to see her boss in another light, so too do her stop-motion endeavors as we see the value of working towards a kinder world, and what better time to start than during the holiday season?
Director Aniello is no stranger to the Emmy proceedings. As creator of the HBO Max series Hacks, she has won two Emmys (writing and directing) as well as a DGA Award. This year she is nominated for three more Emmys on the strength of Hacks--Outstanding Comedy Series as well as writing and directing for a comedy series.
This marks the second straight year that an Apple film has won the coveted primetime commercial Emmy. Back in January 2024, Apple’s “The Greatest,” directed by Kim Gehrig of Somesuch, came away with the Emmy.
This time around, “Fuzzy Feelings” topped a field of nominated commercials consisting of: Apple’s “Album Cover” from Apple’s in-house creatives and directed by David Shane of O Positive; Uber One | Uber Eats’ “Best Friends,” also... Read More