1) Be original. Be confident enough that you don’t give up but also self aware enough to take criticism. A director’s work is a reflection of the director. If you’re an awkward misanthrope get some therapy, your reel will improve. Be a self-creator. Don’t stop hustling just because you signed to a production company. Don’t spend too much time thinking about street cred, just do your thing with good people. Remember how lucky you are to be doing this job, be gracious, professional and have integrity in everything you do. Trust your production company when it comes to business affairs, or get a business manager and trust them. Either way, focus on directing, not on being a director.
2) Be a creative partner in the process. You have to understand, on a granular level, what is important to the idea and why. There is nothing worse then coming under budget and having a failed spot, a pissed off director and client that won’t’ return your calls. I struggle with this all the time when working with Line Producers that are just coming up from Production Managing. When your heart is in the right place then we’ll all get to the end of the project, for better or worse, together.
3) Recently did an interesting VR project with the Google Jump rig. It’s a portable rig that looks like a bunch of daisy chained GoPros on a medium size pizza. Everything was recorded into a small black box that’s attached to the rig. You simply upload the footage to Google’s cloud then 2 days later they send you a film. I was really impressed with how easy it was to shoot and the backend was pretty slick. The mobility of the system allowed us to get some really interesting shots.
4) We recently produced a really amazing short film for i-D in partnership with CHANEL called Jellywolf. The film was showcased on their creative digital platform The Fifth Sense, inspired by Chanel No5 L’EAU fragrance. It was written and directed by Alma Har’el who we work with in the UK. The world that Alma creates for this film is absolutely gorgeous and wildly creative. Jellywolf was featured at Tribeca for their prestigious X Award and recently awarded a Pencil at the D&ADs in London. We're about to publish a graphic novel based on the film – the response has been incredible. I get really excited by the idea of short form content executed at this level, it feels very innovative. I hope we see brands investing much more in these types of films in the future.
