Things were going great. I’d opened the doors of my commercial production company just a few months before, and had completed a number of relatively high-profile individual spots and campaigns. A few had gone into limited national rotation, and my rep was reporting that his agency screenings were going exceedingly well. More boards were flying in the door. Industry publications were calling and subsequently writing nice things about me. It was everything I could have hoped for.
Then it happened. The actors went on strike, and everything changed. The boards stopped flying. Some projects were officially cancelled, others just kind of drifted off. A non-union spot came along, there was talk of going to Canada for another, but somewhere along the way, Tom Donald Films became a much quieter place.
After a couple of weeks, a client called and inquired about a corporate video project. My first reaction was to run from the room, with my fingers forming a cross in front of my face. I’m a commercial director. I make people laugh for 26 seconds before the logo at the end. Besides, who wants to shoot on tape?
Fortunately, my next thought was of the impending mortgage payment, so I held onto the phone and listened some more. And what I heard sounded okay. It was to be four to five minutes in length, funny, with actors, and shooting a pretty decent script. On film. There was even a road sequence with car mounts. In short, a cute little movie that just might be kind of amusing.
So we did that, and it was fun. And because the strike didn’t affect corporate projects, I got to cast a bunch of actor friends, all of whom appreciated the work. Then another project came in, again with actors, but this time on a blue-screen stage so we could accommodate some pretty complex graphics later.
At that point, there was no sign the strike was anywhere near being settled, and here I was shooting good creative, on film, with actors. And while no one was calling to rave about my latest spot they’d just seen on Law & Order, I was working, paying the bills and having an all-around good time doing so.
I discovered another thing about corporate. The clients. There are fewer of them. No assistant account executives gobbling M&Ms and telling you how much they enjoyed studying film in college. No late-arriving creative directors, demanding that you shut down production "for just a few minutes," while he or she saved the day with a rewrite.
What’s more, is that, well—there’s more. You make longer movies. You tell more of the story. What you may lose in giving up some of the coverage for a 26-second scene, you make up in having more time for plot development and characterization.
And finally, you get to finish the work. Although commercial directors are increasingly being offered the chance to supervise editorial, it’s certainly not yet commonplace. And as I discovered, that’s a luxury. You can hire the editor (and the composer, and the mixer, and so on) that you think is appropriate and edit the movie the way you shot it.
Cut to November 1, 2000. The strike is settled, and commercial production has started up again. And hallelujah for that. But will corporate video become just a memory? Hmm, not sure. As a former creative director and writer at several San Francisco-based agencies, advertising is my chosen vocation, and I’ll never stop working in that arena. On the other hand, when you put the same tools in my hand, let me work with the same actors and crew, and then tell me that my job is to tell a story, does it really matter how long the end result is? Somehow, I don’t think so.
