At the Cannes International Advertising Festival, held last month, the 12th annual Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase was unveiled. The Showcase, which presented the work of 24 directors from around the world, exhibited a varied array of work—from spots to music videos to short films to a feature film excerpt.
The number of directors featured this year was down slightly from the 27 exhibited in 2001. David Perry, director of broadcast production at Saatchi & Saatchi, New York, explains why. "What we found was that, the last year being an off-year for the advertising business, there was a little less work being done. Therefore, the work that might have trickled down to newcomers got Shanghai-ed by the other folks. There was less for the newcomers to prove themselves on," he says. "I think it’s as good of a reel as we’ve had. I think it’s always amazing when these young directors get such important work to do. They’re doing serious stuff."
Below, SHOOT takes a look at a few of the helmers selected for this year’s Showcase.
Jay Chandrasekhar
Jay Chandrasekhar’s entry, a segment of his full-length movie, Super Troopers, was the only feature film excerpt that was screened at the Saatchi showcase. (Chandrasekhar directs spots through bicoastal/international @radical.media.)
The Super Troopers segment is hilarious and truly strange. Three guys cruising through northern Vermont on their way to Canada gleefully smoke pot. Before long, two highway patrolmen appear to be tailing them. In a panic, the guy in the backseat gobbles up two bags of drugs to destroy the evidence, but the lawmen don’t pull them over after all. Things get really weird when the troopers reappear and do pull the guys over, not once, but twice. Is the guy in the back seat hallucinating all of this?
Chandrasekhar is part of Broken Lizard, a five-man comedy group, whose members all write and act, and who all appear in Super Trooper. "We try to keep things a little dark," says Chandrasekhar of the film’s sense of humor. "There’s that saying that comedy doesn’t have shadows. I don’t agree with that."
Broken Lizard’s members met while they were attending Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y. When they were in college, they made short videos and presented them at comedy shows they would put on. The group moved to New York and continued to perform. In addition, Chandrasekhar took a filmmaking course at New York University, and eventually became a film editor.
Inspired by Monty Python, Broken Lizard decided to take up filmmaking, and made a $250,000 feature, Puddle Cruiser, that got into Sundance. Super Troopers followed, and now the collective is in pre-production on their upcoming feature, Club Dread. The whodunit horror comedy features Broken Lizard playing the staff of a resort owned by Coconut Pete, a character based on Jimmy Buffet.
After Club Dread is wrapped, Chandrasekhar plans to helm an episode of The Andy Richter Show (he’s previously directed three episodes of Fox’s Undeclared) and return to spot work. Prior to joining @radical, Chandrasekhar directed cinema ads for Coca-Cola; since joining his current roost, he’s helmed spots for Nike.
Asked how he feels about the Saatchi inclusion, Chandrasekhar says, "I think I’m much better known in the film industry; hopefully this will get me better known on the commercial side."
Happy
Happy is a directing collective composed of Guy Shelmerdine, an art director with Cliff Freeman and Partners, New York; Richard Farmer, formerly an executive producer at Mindfield, Los Angeles; Lucas Spaulding, an editor at MacKenzie Cutler, New York; and Tom Wales. The collective is represented by bicoastal Smuggler in the U.S., and by Arden Sutherland Dodd, London, in the U.K. and Europe.
Shelmerdine and Wales paired up to direct the anti-smoking PSA, "Lungs," which effectively uses gross-out comedy to get its point across. The :30 shows a young guy in a diner lighting up a cigarette. After taking one drag, he starts coughing violently—so violently that he spits his lungs out onto a table. He watches in amazement as his lungs jump off the table and head outside, where we can hear them breathe in some fresh air. The closing title: "A cigarette contains over 3,700 poisons that will turn your lungs against you."
Shelmerdine, who formed Happy with Farmer in 2001, is clearly delighted at the collective’s inclusion in the 2002 showcase. "Due to the success at Cannes, along with a couple of other things we did, we’re going to go at it more aggressively now," says Shelmerdine, referring to Happy’s plans to pursue more spot directing gigs. Has the exposure generated more work for Happy? "Definitely, we’ve got a bunch of boards in already," he says. In fact, Happy is currently helming a spot for Rugged Land, a U.S. publishing company.
How does the collective break up helming duties? "We’re figuring that out one step at a time, depending on the project and who’s available," he says. "All in all, we’re all involved in everything."
Does Happy want to branch out into long form? "No, we want to focus on commercials," relates Shelmerdine. "We would love to do some videos, too."
Rob Kaplan
Rob Kaplan’s Wrangler spot, "Western Dreams," portrays a sleeping couple’s uneasy dreams. Twitching bodies, gender confusion, animal imagery, and of course, jeans, figure prominently in the commercial. The moody Radiohead track, "Everything in Its Right Place," serves as the score for "Western Dreams." The director created the spec spot last summer before he joined Great Guns, which has offices in London and Los Angeles.
Commenting on his helming style, Kaplan says, "I veer toward the slightly dark side. I like things that cause a slight unease in the viewer—you can’t pin it down, but there’s something that touches you on an almost subliminal emotional level. [‘Western Dreams’] was a very physical, emotional piece. It jars the viewer into paying attention."
Kaplan got his start at the BBC, where he worked his way up from researcher to documentary director. He says that he was part of a new wave of digital directors who both shoot and direct their own material for British television. Comparing his realistic TV work with his highly stylized spots, he says that the former is "totally the opposite of what I’m doing in commercials.
"I was always interested in filmmaking," he continues, "and TV is really interested in journalism most of the time. There isn’t a lot of craft. I got increasingly frustrated with that. I realized that I needed to get into a much more creative area."
A couple of years ago, Kaplan entered a short film competition sponsored by Wrangler, and won an award. Taking a cue from director Jonathan Glazer’s work for the jeans company, the up-and-comer conceptualized and executed "Western Dreams." (Glazer is represented by Academy, London.) Currently, Kaplan is working on a Nytol spot, via Grey, London, that he says is inspired by the films of cinema pioneer Georges Melies.
Commenting on his showcase inclusion, Kaplan says, "I realized, having worked in television, that if you’re going to come at commercials, you really need to come in strongly. Otherwise you’re just another director, and there are so many around. I had to get into Saatchi."
Christian Loubek
"I see a lot of director/cameramen that definitely lean on the visuals very heavily," says director/DP Christian Loubek of bicoastal HKM Productions. "That’s not my approach. [Visuals are] usually the last thing I think about. It’s only one of a whole toolbox of things you can use."
What landed Loubek in Saatchi’s elite showcase was the visually striking, but still subtle "Turbo," an ad he helmed through Arnold Worldwide, Boston, which promotes the speedy Volkswagen Turbo S.
In the spot, an office worker, who needs to get to a business meeting pronto, borrows the keys to a co-worker’s Beetle and rushes to a parking structure. When he can’t unlock the car’s doors with the electronic key, he crumples in frustration. It turns out he’s pointing the device at the wrong vehicle; the unassuming Turbo S sits behind him. The tag: "The 180 horsepower New Beetle Turbo S. You’d never suspect it."
What’s special about the quirky :60 is its strange atmosphere, which could be described as retro-futurist: imagine an old Kraftwerk album cover come to life. The spot’s minimalist electronic soundtrack, muted production design, vaguely ’70s wardrobe, and casting, all contribute to the commercial’s pleasantly odd tone.
"It was nice to get that exposure in an international market," says Loubek of the VW ad’s inclusion in the Saatchi Showcase. "It meant a lot to me because it seemed to appeal to more than just the American market," he says.
Loubek started out as a DP in Seattle, where he shot independent features and short films. He went on to helm commercials in the area, before he moved to New York and joined HKM last year. Loubek recently finished a Hewlett-Packard campaign, via Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco. When asked if he’s garnered any work because of the Cannes exposure, Loubek realizes there may be a connection between the showcase and his next job—an undisclosed project for Saatchi & Saatchi. "Maybe I’m getting some work already."
Erik van Wyk
Erik van Wyk earned inclusion in the Showcase for two very funny ads: "Easy Rooster," and Virgin Atlantic’s "Haircut," that he directed via Velocity Afrika, Johannesburg, South Africa; van Wyk recently signed with Harry Nash, London, for representation in the U.K.
"Easy Rooster," for Coop Free Range Chicken, sends up the classic counterculture biker film, Easy Rider. The spot shows a motorcyclist tooling through a mountainous landscape to the blasting sounds of garage rock. Eventually we see who’s actually driving the big bike: one cool-looking fowl. The spot’s text tag: "Choose free-range eggs so hens can get out more often."
"Haircut" displays a more low-key, but equally absurd, brand of humor. In the ad, what appears to be a no-nonsense military barbershop turns out to be a place where a sensitive hairstylist caters to his clients’ every need. It’s the sort of salon where officers get perms and soldiers get personalized attention. The closing text: "Imagine if everyone treated you as well as we do."
Van Wyk started his career as an art director and eventually moved on to the position of copywriter. His most recent agency affiliation was at TBWA Hunt Lascaris.
"I like keeping my executions as true to the concept as possible, so I am quite versatile in that sense," says van Wyk. "My style? Maybe performance combined with visual storytelling."
Commenting on his inclusion in the Showcase, van Wyk notes, "I think the Saatchi Showcase is fantastic exposure for any new director
"Not only because of the publicity," he continues, "but it also gives one an idea what other new directors from all parts of the globe are up to. [The event is] good for inspiration and [it provides] a bit of healthy competition."
