In the fall of 2002, director Lara Shapiro was awarded a package of NFL spots featuring actor Don Cheadle (Ocean’s Eleven, Traffic, Boogie Nights) out of Young & Rubicam (Y&R), New York. The fact that a woman won the job is notable, given the fact that high-profile, sports-themed spotwork is rarely given to the handful of female directors out there.
"The NFL spots were a real triumph for me," agrees Shapiro, who is represented by Park Pictures, New York. (The job was produced via NFL Films, Mount Laurel, N.J.) "It is nice to know there are people out there who are unbiased."
Taras Wayner, creative director at Y&R, says the agency gave Shapiro the project because the agency team believed she’d deliver the best end result. "I’ve always been a fan of hers," Wayner shares. "She has never gotten those huge jobs. I think this [NFL package] was a big job for her, and she brought so much to it."
The spots promoting the NFL Playoffs were shot last fall at Qualcomm Stadium, San Diego (the site of Super Bowl XXXVII). Each ad finds Cheadle talking directly to the camera about great moments in football, and some utilize archival footage from the NFL and/or props. "Catch" has Cheadle climbing a ladder placed in the end zone to demonstrate just how high San Francisco 49er Dwight Clark leapt to catch a pass from Joe Montana during an ’82 National Football Conference playoff game between the 49ers and the Dallas Cowboys. Another ad, "Joe," finds Cheadle singing the praises of legendary New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath. As a nod to Namath’s pimp-like fashion style, Cheadle is clad in a fur coat.
The spots are simply staged and shot on 16mm. "Visually, she brought so much to the spot," Wayner praises. "It was Lara’s idea to shoot it on 16mm. She thought it would look good, but have a bit of an edge and a roughness to it."
Thematically, the NFL work is smart and informative, but also humorous. "Lara can make real things funny without feeling like it’s a joke," Wayner says. "That’s a hard thing to do, and it is hard to find a director who understands that."
For her part, Shapiro credits the creative team at Y&R with making her job easier by formulating a solid concept. "You could just tell by reading the scripts that they were going to be great," she notes. "Good creative comes first." Having an actor of Cheadle’s caliber to deliver the lines only enhanced the final product, Shapiro adds. "It was interesting to work with a real pro. He is so incredibly talented, and it was such a pleasure to have someone like him delivering this great copy."
Shapiro has had experience working with celebrity talent. An alumna of the graduate filmmaking program at Columbia University, New York, Shapiro made a name for herself with a series of Independent Film Channel promos she created and directed in ’98 through bicoastal/international hungry man, with company partner/director Hank Perlman onboard as her co-director.
The promos were shot like documentaries and featured actors such as Matt Damon, Lili Taylor and Liev Schreiber seriously discussing their respect and admiration for an acclaimed indie film director named Christy, who’s ultimately revealed to be a little girl, played by Hallie Eisenberg of Pepsi fame.
The acclaim Shapiro received for that job led to her signing with hungry man for commercial representation. During her three years there, she directed spots for clients such as the Maryland Lottery, PeoplePC and Huggies.
Shapiro departed hungry man in ’00. After stints with Santa Monica-based Fuel and now defunct Milk Bar, she went freelance in ’01 and found herself working with celebrity talent again when the Wolf Group, New York, hired her to direct "Marc Anthony’s I Love New York" for Empire State Development. The spot—made with production support from Highway 61, New York—had the singer taking viewers on a tour of his native New York.
GREAT
PERFORMANCES
While Shapiro enjoys working with famous folk, she says that "it’s nothing I’ve tried to do," and notes that she is just as content to work with lesser-known actors. One of her strengths is casting performers and coaxing believable performances out of them.
For example, the actors featured in a two-spot package she directed for Nicoderm, out of Publicis, Montreal, had to speak convincingly about wanting to quit smoking and succeeding with the Nicoderm patch. (One spot was titled "Success Story"; she also directed an ad in French as part of the same package.) Before any footage was shot, Shapiro says she spent time "helping the actors develop characters so that they felt like they were speaking from their own experience." Shapiro helmed the spots through a Montreal-based production company called Four Zero One, a sister company to Radke Films, Toronto, which represents the director in Canada.
The actors were working from a script on the Nicoderm job, but Shapiro also allowed them to ad-lib. "If an actor is delivering a line and it doesn’t seem real, I’m quick to find out what we can do to make it feel right for them," Shapiro says.
Shapiro is well known for performance-driven fare, but she recently used her technical prowess when she shot an ad for Expedia.ca created by Garneau Wurstlin Philp, Toronto, and produced via Radke Films. The spot, "Who’s More Excited," shows a boy jumping up and down on a bed in his room. The camera pans downward, through the floorboards (Shapiro built a fake floor piece to achieve the effect) and into the living room below, where his parents are booking a trip online through Expedia.ca. "I’d like to do more effects work," she says. "I think a strength of mine is that I have a technical mind."
The director also believes she has something to offer in the edit room. She generally gets to work with an editor when she directs in Canada, but she rarely takes part in the edit when she shoots for an American agency. "Usually, I stay out of the edit because I find that as soon as shooting ends, the agency gets under a lot of pressure from the client," Shapiro says. "It becomes a very political thing, and my being there doesn’t help. I’m not there to pick a battle with the client and the agency. My attitude is, I want to deliver the best stuff that I can, and then it’s up to them to make the decisions about what they think is going to work in the market."
