Silence is golden for HBOvoyeur
By Robert Goldrich
While the exploits of Jake Scott have been chronicled in SHOOT over the years–with such accomplishments as the primetime Emmy-winning Nike commercial “Move” in 2003, and an induction into the Music Video Production Association’s Hall of Fame–we felt compelled to revisit the director on the strength of two recent projects, one the ambitious, logistically complex HBOvoyeur initiative that breaks new media ground; the other a simple slice-of-life PSA in which three people seated at a table discuss the performance of an investment portfolio, but with an unexpected poignant effect relative to the genocide in Darfur.
For the former, Scott collaborated with BBDO New York to create a “Voyeur” campaign encompassing such components as a building-sized “peep show” in Manhattan, content online at HBOvoyeur.com, mobile fare and a film available via HBO On Demand.
The building projection is the image of an apartment building, in which we see residents moving about in their dwellings, allowing viewers to be voyeurs into their private lives. BBDO New York senior creative director/copywriter Mike Smith observes that the campaign brings a new dimension to branding. Rather than an outdoor billboard proclaiming that HBO tells good stories, you can see stories unfold on the projected film along the side of a building on New York’s Lower East Side.
Online you can peer further into these people’s living spaces and lives, with a video featuring 30 actors in a dozen apartments. Delving deeper, you see that some of these lives and goings on in the apartments are connected to one another. You can even select from different pieces of original music tracks to set the tone and discover how sound affects what you’re watching. There’s more than two hours of content on the website, with viewers opting to watch as many or as few stories as they like.
Putting viewers in the position of accessing and in some respects being able to orchestrate stories that aren’t part of HBO network programming is indeed a progressive way to brand HBO as a special place for storytelling.And while viewers are the voyeurs, the HBO On Demand film The Watcher introduces us to the master “voyeur” and tells us his story.
Polyphony
For the centerpiece building projection–which sets the tone for the other components of the campaign–Scott notes that although there was no dialogue in what was essentially a silent film, he turned to music for a philosophical approach to the project.
“This sounds a bit pretentious,” says Scott, “but we had to make this work in a polyphonic way–in a polyphony, all parts are equal. The actors and the individual scenes were designed in essence to work that way, to play so you don’t have one story dominating the whole.
“Sure, there are times when your eyes are drawn to a certain event in a certain room. Yet generally we were fairly successful in creating the idea of polyphony because that’s how it was designed in terms of the characters, movement and blocking of each scene. We kept using rhythm as an analogy. Rhythm, movement, tempo, beat changes to keep your eyes on the whole mosaic that was unfolding before your eyes. In some respects, we were writing a score more than writing a script. It was attaining a musical quality without having music.
“And then to hear the original music that composers brought to the project–and which viewers could choose from–was quite gratifying,” continues Scott.
“The music was wonderful and what they created was an indication of how musical the project was that we put together.”
When asked the obvious–if Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window was a resource he consulted for insights into how to tackle the HBO project–Scott observes, “We kept looking at it [Rear Window] for answers and couldn’t find any. The common bond of voyeurism didn’t yield anything beyond that. In some respects we had more access than Hitchcock had in Rear Window because we could tear down that fourth wall.”
This isn’t to say that there wasn’t a source of past cinematic inspiration for Scott, who cites the work of director Jacques Tati.
“I’m a big fan of his films which are more or less dialogue free–like we had to be–but are sight gags. His films are essentially modern silent classics in the tradition of Keeton and Chaplin. He was a great orchestrator of the wide shot, particularly in his film Play Time.
“That helped as we worked collaboratively with the agency and a great team of people to design this project.”
Darfur
The earlier alluded to slice-of-life spot (featured in this week’s “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery as well as in our Creative Voice column) has an investment broker seated at a table with a youngish looking, middle-aged couple. The investment guru has good news for his two clients, informing them that their portfolio performed “very well” this year.
“Energy stocks are up and technology is strong,” he says. “You took a little bit of a hit in real estate but more than made up for it in genocide.”
The couple is taken aback by the last revelation as the investment counselor turns a page of the portfolio report to reveal but a glimpse of black-and-white photos showing children and others subjected to the horror in Darfur. A voiceover intervenes with the question, “Is your mutual fund funding genocide? Find out at SaveDarfur.org,” a website address which appears in the end tag, accompanied by the identity of the message’s sponsor, the Save Darfur Coalition.
Making the message all the more poignant is that the couple with the mutual funds look like decent people who just never thought to look into the nature of their investments.
From a directorial standpoint, this PSA–for Greer Margolis Mitchell & Burns (GMMB), an ad agency/media firm specializing in major social issues and political campaigns–is a simple piece that is 180 degrees away logistically from the more complex, multi-layered, multi-platform HBO “Voyeur” project.
But as bookends they share a storytelling bond that attests to the versatility of their director.
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Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More