Tuning Into bud.TV As Series Director, Creator
By Millie Takaki
“I’ve approached my career in a real organic way. I try to do a good job on one thing and it seems to open up doors to another. A lot of doors seem to be opening right now. Exciting things are happening,” relates John Immesoete, who directs via Backyard Productions, Venice, Calif., and creates and develops varied forms of content via its sister shop Seed.
His latest high-profile endeavor entails extensive work–both as a director and a content creator/developer–for Anheuser-Busch’s online entertainment network bud.TV. A-B naturally gravitated to Immesoete due to its comfort level with him, dating back to his days as a group creative director at DDB Chicago where he had a creative hand in assorted notable campaigns for Budweiser and other A-B brands.
That trust has translated into his creating and developing concepts for three bud.TV shows: two reality series, Truly Famous and What Girls Want, as well as the comedy Replaced By A Chimp.
Seed worked directly with A-B on the new series, with Backyard producing four episodes for each (with the reality TV show episodes being between five and six minutes apiece, and episodes of Replaced By A Chimp ranging between one-and-a-half to two minutes). Seed and Backyard brought reality TV show veteran Rick Telles into Truly Famous and What Girls Want. Telles served as producer on those two series, collaborating on the directing of the episodes with creative director/writer/director Immesoete.
Truly Famous centers on a fake celebrity who keeps an entourage of hangers-on and goes to various places to see how much they can get for free based on the made-up celeb status.
What Girls Want is a straight girls for straight guys variation on the Queer Eye for The Straight Guy premise. The bud.TV show features single guys trying to connect with the fairer sex at a bar. After seeing their approach, straight girl experts makeover the males and advise them on how to improve their spiel to the ladies. The guys then return to the bar to see how they fare after expert counsel and a new salon-created look.
Meanwhile Replaced By A Chimp explores how well a chimp would do in certain professions, including as an artist and a dentist. Immesoete directed all of the episodes in this series via Backyard.
“The online network is a natural extension of Budweiser’s brand which is all about entertainment as reflected in its advertising over the years,” observes Immesoete, citing as examples the “Real Men of Genius” campaign, the series of spots centered on Leon, an egotistical athlete, and of course the perennial top ranked Super Bowl commercials year after year. “Budweiser has huge equity in the entertainment world. And based on my years with the brand at DDB, I came to know and understand the brand’s voice. We had to be true to the voice and personality of the brand in these new [bud.TV] shows.”
For Immesoete the experience is exciting on several levels. For one, he’s contributing to programming for a 24/7 network with global reach. “To be part of this grand scale launch has been wonderful.” Additionally, there’s potential for the shows to blossom into something much more. “I’ve already gotten some calls from different places expressing interest about expanding the shows into longer format series. There’s the potential for some of this work to evolve into longer shows, perhaps even more traditional format [half-hour or hourl] programs….The web and TV are coming together in a real circular motion. The web can be a proving ground for a show to go into a different medium like television, or vice versa….Thankfully I’ve kept my hands in everything that interests me over the years–from advertising to writing to directing. And as walls are dissolving between media and between movies, commercials and TV, major windows of opportunity are starting to emerge.”
Career brewing
“I feel very fortunate to have gotten into advertising to begin with,” reflects Immesoete, who was an English major at Iowa State University. “I was probably one of the last guys who was able to get a job at a top agency with a bachelor’s degree at a state school.”
The door that opened was a creative trainee program at Leo Burnett, Chicago, started by the legendary Ted Bell. Immesoete was part of a trainee class that included Mike Figliulo (who went on to become a group creative director at Burnett and later chief creative officer at Young & Rubicam, Chicago) and Steve Bougdanos (creative director/art director at DDB Chicago on such work as the Emmy-nominated Budweiser spots “Clydesdale American Dream” and “Applause”).
From those trainee beginnings, Immesoete worked up the ranks during his tenure at Burnett to copywriter, then associate creative director and creative director, working on such accounts as McDonald’s, Hallmark and Nintendo. An opportunity then emerged at DDB Chicago where he became a creative director on Budweiser, eventually ascending to group creative director and then senior VP/creative director running Budweiser, Bud Light and for awhile McDonald’s. Immesoete also got the chance to direct some projects at DDB.
Three years ago he decided to move over to the production company side of the business–but the move was about more than focusing on his directorial career. “The whole landscape was starting to change, with new forms of content being discussed and considered,” recalls Immesoete. “I thought it might be an interesting time to not only go out and direct but to try to form a new type of company that packages production and idea generation in a way more like Hollywood does.”
This led him to Backyard and then the Seed offshoot. Immesoete has been active in commercialmaking, with recent directing credits including a third round of spots for Metro PCS via The Richards Group, Dallas, a TV and Internet campaign for Chrysler Jeep and Dodge for BBDO Detroit and a client-direct :60 for the Independent Film Channel.
Furthermore, at press time, Immesoete was in discussions to take on a long-form content development project via Seed for another major client.
“It’s been a great mix for me–directing commercials and being able to create and direct other new forms of entertainment,” he affirms. “It’s allowed me to stay fresh and tap into all my skillsets. I feel fortunate to be in such a creatively fulfilling place in life.”
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