1) Know that you can do good and be good. Have a strong point of view, give it your all but don’t be a bully. The most sought after directors are all about making great work and about making it a great experience.
2) Make yourself invaluable, find opportunities to help without being asked, say yes a lot, and pick up the phone. This business is all about relationships and problem solving.
3) I am an incubator for most of our jobs. I nurture concepts through creative development, shape them for feasibility, and hand off when they’re ready to bid or award. I am sort of a jack of all trades, master of none. During creative development I ask a lot of questions to try to define scope, expectations, and definitions of success. And I’ve learned to bring a partner in early when we are talking about new technology and experiential. Those jobs aren’t boilerplate and if I haven’t done one just like it then I need to talk to someone who has.
4) Our Halo War of Wits campaign because it was surprise and delight. We’re 12 years strong with Xbox, and Halo has always been a somber and compelling niche. But in War of Wits we took an alien from the game and cast him as a used car salesman at a real dealership called Camacho Autoworks (where he still has an online profile and email address). I love absurdity. I wish I could take credit for any of the production but it was an amazing group of partners including Randy Krallman and it was produced by our youngest staffer. She is a badass and is another reason I am proud of this project.
Director of integrated production
215McCann
Martin Scorsese On “The Saints,” Faith In Filmmaking and His Next Movie
When Martin Scorsese was a child growing up in New York's Little Italy, he would gaze up at the figures he saw around St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. "Who are these people? What is a saint?" Scorsese recalls. "The minute I walk out the door of the cathedral and I don't see any saints. I saw people trying to behave well within a world that was very primal and oppressed by organized crime. As a child, you wonder about the saints: Are they human?" For decades, Scorsese has pondered a project dedicated to the saints. Now, he's finally realized it in "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints," an eight-part docudrama series debuting Sunday on Fox Nation, the streaming service from Fox News Media. The one-hour episodes, written by Kent Jones and directed by Elizabeth Chomko, each chronicle a saint: Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, John the Baptist, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene, Moses the Black, Sebastian and Maximillian Kolbe. Joan of Arc kicks off the series on Sunday, with three weekly installments to follow; the last four will stream closer to Easter next year. In naturalistic reenactments followed by brief Scorsese-led discussions with experts, "The Saints" emphasizes that, yes, the saints were very human. They were flawed, imperfect people, which, to Scorsese, only heightens their great sacrifices and gestures of compassion. The Polish priest Kolbe, for example, helped spread antisemitism before, during WWII, sheltering Jews and, ultimately, volunteering to die in the place of a man who had been condemned at Auschwitz. Scorsese, who turns 82 on Sunday, recently met for an interview not long after returning from a trip to his grandfather's hometown in Sicily. He was made an honorary citizen and the experience was still lingering in his mind. Remarks have... Read More