Finding meaning in advertising
By Millie Takaki
An acclaimed photographer and chronicler of youth culture, Lauren Greenfield has successfully diversified into short and long-form filmmaking. Her latest directorial inroads have been made in commercials via bicoastal/international production house Chelsea Pictures.
But her story is far more involved than making the transition from still shooting to spotmaking. Greenfield changed her views on advertising dramatically as reflected in her first major published work, Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood, released some eight years ago, and her subsequent experience lensing a print campaign for Nike.
Fast Forward examined materialism’s effect on youth. “My first book was critical of advertising and its impact on youth as well as gender,” recalls Greenfield. “But then I did this Nike print ad shoot [for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco] in which girls simply spoke about being themselves and not having to look like the perfect models they see on television.
While that Nike campaign was influential for young people, its importance didn’t fully hit home for Greenfield until she went on two photo journalism assignments, one for The New York Times which called for her to examine what it means to be 13 years old today. That work wound up being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The other assignment took Greenfield to Missouri in order to chronicle a week in the life of an American high school, resulting in a cover shot for Time Magazine.
In both cases, Greenfield had occasion to visit the rooms of teenage girls where on the walls, amidst posters of rock stars and the like, she saw her Nike print ads.
“I think then I fully realized the good that advertising can do–It’s one thing to have your work well received in the professional community, but seeing that Nike work on those bedroom walls meant so much more in terms of meaningfully connecting with people.”
Chelsea
Greenfield’s work also meaningfully connected with Chelsea partners Allison Amon and Lisa Mehling. Fans of Greenfield’s early print work, Amon and Mehling went to the Sundance Film Festival in 2006 to see Thin, a feature which marked Greenfield’s directorial debut and was based on her book of the same title which chronicled four women as they struggled to fight eating disorders. The film further heightened Amon’s and Mehling’s enthusiasm for Greenfield’s prospects in commercialmaking. A couple months after the ’06 Sundance Fest, Chelsea signed Greenfield for exclusive representation as a spot director.
Chelsea’s commitment has yielded recent tangible results. Greenfield directed a U.S. Army short chronicling the lives of soldier’s families and the sacrifices they make at home so that their loved ones can serve our country in Iraq. One version of the short, approximately three-and-a-half minutes in length, is being used internally by the Army, another is playing on the Army website. The ambitious project, for McCann Erickson, New York, marked Greenfield’s first major foray into the ad content arena. She found value in the job, which tapped into her documentary, journalism and people portrait sensibilities.
This gig came just prior to Greenfield returning to Sundance in ’08, this time with kids+money, a 32-minute short that sprung from a 12-minute online video she did for The New York Times. Kids+money was but one of eight documentary shorts accepted into the ’08 Sundance Fest. The film centers on teenagers in Los Angeles discussing money–getting it, spending it and some learning to live without it.
From the outset, Greenfield worked with some noted commercial industry collaborators–spanning both the 12 and 32-minute versions–such as DP David Rush Morrison and editor Adam Parker (of edit house Chrome).
“My thinking more seriously about commercials and being with Chelsea had an impact on how kids+money turned out at Sundance,” relates Greenfield. “The film [produced by Chelsea] is a little more visually styled photographically, the story is very efficiently told.”
Just prior to Sundance, a deal was finalized for HBO to air [the 32-minute] kids+money later this year.
First TV spot
Greenfield has that and another project on-air debut to look forward to this year. At press time she had wrapped her first full-fledged TV commercial, an ad for menopausal drug Estroven out of Young & Rubicam, New York.
The assignment dovetailed with Greenfield’s long running personal project, a book on how aging is changing. She has for some time been photographing men and women who have significant age differences and are romantic couples. Y&R gravitated to Greenfield at first for a print ad promoting Estroven pairing an older woman and a younger man. Greenfield sent the advertising agency several photographs that she thought would be in the spirit of the campaign. Y&R immediately gravitated to one of the photos and wound up embracing it for the print.
The photo also helped to inspire the TV–and inspired Y&R to look to Greenfield to direct the commercial. Greenfield paired with DP Tami Reiker for the spot shoot and again the director found meaning in the work.
“I feel fortunate that my advertising projects thus far have been not only storytelling pieces but stories that are significant for me,” says Greenfield. “The challenge for me is finding meaningful content and I’m discovering that this can be done in advertising.”
As for Reiker, Greenfield says, “I loved working with Tami. She has an amazing eye and helped me do justice to the storyline of a vital 50-year-old woman being with a much younger man.”
Also gratifying was being able to do both the print and TV ends of the campaign. “To have one vision reflected consistently across the print and television represented a wonderful opportunity for me,” relates Greenfield. “That’s the first time I’ve had that experience and I hope I have many more.”
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