The song was familiar to those of us who listened to alternative radio during the late 1980s. The images that accompany the music, and the director behind them, were not. Hewlett-Packard (HP)’s "You," featuring The Cure song "Pictures of You," was director Francois Vogel’s first American commercial.
A photographer and graphic artist-turned-director, Vogel’s helming experience prior to the HP project—which promotes the company’s digital imaging products, and was created by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (GS&P), San Francisco—was largely comprised of abstract short films that received some exposure in film festivals. Though Vogel has had commercial representation for four years in Europe via Paris-based Entropie (and stateside representation via bicoastal Tool of North America for the past year and a half), his only other commercial endeavor was a series of promos for Zurich Insurance’s sponsorship of Britain’s rugby championships on the U.K.’s Sky Channel.
Vogel humbly admits he’s been something of a hard sell. "Every time an agency shows my reel to the client [along with other directors’ reels], they always choose one of the other directors," he notes.
But that changed when the HP project came along. As Vogel recalls, "This time, [the agency] only showed my [reel]."
Graphics imagery
A quick review of the director’s reel and it’s easy to see why. His live-action short film, Les Crabes, features opposing gangs of crab-like creatures squaring off by the seashore. More to the point, the creatures exist in their own graphic squares, much like how the images from "You" involve live-action footage broken into moving square layers representative of a photographic frame. The effect underscores the spot’s message: potential photographs are everywhere we look.
Likewise, Vogel’s music video for Peter Gabriel’s "Growing Up" finds the live-action characters in round raindrop layers. The clip features a variety of visual effects, including distorted perspectives—a technique seen in Vogel’s other shorts and his still photography.
"He designs lenses and special gizmos that help him [achieve] his ideas," says managing director/executive producer Claude Letessier of Entropie—which has a reciprocal representation/production deal with Tool. "I’ve seen tons of stuff … he’s got a wire, a shoe box, a couple of mirrors and prisms, and there it is—he just designed it for $29.99."
Vogel says that GS&P first approached him with a "kind of crazy circular drawing, with different ideas and different lines. There was no storyboard, no action, it was a very abstract concept." The ad was shot over six days in Barcelona, during which things continued to evolve. "Everyday we changed things," he adds.
The dynamic layering effect was achieved in various ways. "Sometimes we’d do different passes [of one scene], and sometimes just one," says the director. "The way I work, you cannot consider that when the shooting is done we’re finished. It’s like there was another shoot [taking place] inside the computer."
As Letessier puts it, the term "postproduction" has lost some of its meaning. For the HP job, he says, "Postproduction was a complete part of the conception and shoot process. Because of Francois’ technique, when [the elements come together], all of a sudden you see a different thing … but this is the magic."
Tool managing director Phillip Detchmendy concurs. "Francois is the type of person who will be intimately involved [in a project] from design through delivery. He can’t shoot and just leave dailies behind. His involvement is complete."
Vogel attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, and got his professional start as a graphic artist at the Paris visual effects house Micros Image. During off hours, he was able to use the company’s equipment for his personal projects. Among his other short films are Trois Pétits Chats and Faux Plafond.
While doing computer graphics, Vogel made the acquaintance of Letessier and the directing team the Poiraud Brothers (Didier and Thierry), who later brought him into the Entropie fold as a director. (Entropie has a reciprocal representation deal with Tool.) Vogel continued to work as a graphic artist while building his directing reel, but has since given up that day job. When he’s not directing, he continues to work with still photography and other experimental art forms. "There’s no way he’s going to do a commercial a month," says Letessier. "He wants to do three or four a year, because his personal projects are very inspiring. It’s an honest creative process."
Among his more recent films is a short film for Canal+. Vogel was one of 10 directors commissioned to make a film derived from the same starting point—a voice singing. Vogel’s Canal+ short deals with memory and the five senses. The plot follows a woman with seven men in her life. Each of them has a particular trait that satisfies a certain sensory aspect—be it taste, smell, touch, sight or sound. A sixth man has a special sense—a pleasantly warm body temperature. The seventh man lends his narrative voice to the story. "I don’t know what special sense he has," Vogel says. "You have five senses, so why seven men?" The answer is for the viewer to decide.
Vogel, for his part, has decided that commercials make a fine complement for his other endeavors. "I was a little afraid of doing commercials, but now I’m happy to," he says. The HP project, he adds, "is a good start for me."
