This week Saatchi & Saatchi debuted its 16th annual New Directors Showcase during the Cannes International Advertising Festival proceedings. The presentation highlighted the work of 22 emerging directors (with the agency counting several teams as individual entries) from around the world.
The Showcase annually features directors who are selected by ad shops from the entire Saatchi & Saatchi global network. And this year the depth of talent was remarkable, according to Bob Isherwood, Saatchi’s worldwide creative director who is based in New York.
“We could have easily had enough directors to fill three showcases,” he related. “I haven’t seen this kind of depth in years.”
What Isherwood has also seen is a shift in the nature of the projects that gain inclusion in the Saatchi Showcase. He said that this year just over one-third of the work consisted of commercials. That’s a far cry from what had been the norm. “Ten years ago, three-quarters of the work would have been commercials.”
The change, he continued, can be attributed to several factors. For one, “The ad industry isn’t creating as many good creative opportunities as it used to for young directors. There are so few good scripts to go around and frequently established directors are stepping in and taking them. From an agency’s perspective, it makes more sense to go with an established director rather than a new director, all things being equal otherwise.”
ACCOMPLICE At the same time, also tipping the scale away from spot entries is the emergence of other content opportunities and outlets, including viral fare, short films and spec work. “Many new directors are writing their own stories, taking a hand in creating projects to showcase their talent,” said Isherwood, citing Los Angeles-based Dagen Merrill as an example.
Merrill’s short film, Accomplice, was a top four finalist in Sundance’s Project Greenlight competition sponsored by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Merrill took what Isherwood described as “a gobbledygook script with random words and sentences,” and turned it into a compelling story, Accomplice. In the storyline, a couple of boys are talking to an older guy, who’s carrying a bag, presumably with illegal drugs. The guy goes upstairs. We soon hear a couple of gunshots; the youngsters subsequently find two bullet shells. It turns out we just heard what was the assassination of President Kennedy.
Isherwood said that Merrill turned a meaningless script given to Greenlight contestants into a story that resonates with historical significance and poignancy. All the more impressive when you consider that Merrill recently received his Master in Fine Arts from the University of Southern California’s Peter Stark Producing Program.
Among the other helmers impressing Isherwood was Nagi Noda from Japan. Noda’s “Sentimental Promo” music video for Yuki looks like a tour de force piece of computer animation. But, said Isherwood, the work was done entirely in camera and is being repurposed into content for Coca-Cola. Noda is repped by the London office of bicoastal/international Partizan.
Indeed as it did last year, animation in varied forms scored impressively in the Saatchi Showcase. For example, director Shane Acker gained inclusion based on his animated short 9, which is no stranger to accolades. Last year 9 won a Gold Student Academy Award as well as a special jury prize at the Annecy animation festival.
Director Sharon Colman’s animated short Badger also made the Showcase, as did helmer Andreas Hasle’s poignant stop-motion animation MFA AIDS Awareness PSA, “Human Ball.” The Scottish Colman is affiliated with Tandem Films, London. Hasle is with Brussels-based Caviar and is repped in the U.S. by Roses Are Blue, Santa Monica.
Another stop motion project, Orange’s TV spot “A Minute” out of Mother, London, earned a Showcase slot for Swedish directing duo RBG6 (Joel Nordstrom and Lars Ohlin) of Nexus Productions, London. And the helming team of Mrzyk & Moriceau of France’s Wanda Productions gained inclusion on the strength of their animation piece “Hardwish,” as did Indian animation/live-action helmer Arvind Palep for the Alias music clip “Sixes Last.” Palep is with New York house 1st Ave Machine.
IN THE MIX The rest of the 2006 Saatchi Showcase lineup is a mix of individual directors and helming teams. Among the latter are: the Nakd collective, based in Rio de Janeiro, and repped by bicoastal The Ebeling Group; Si&Ad of Academy, London; the German duo of Alex Kiesl & Steffen Hacker repped by Spy Films, Toronto; and Javier Gutierrez & Stukan (of Mexican and Peruvian descent, respectively) of Ciberfilms, Mexico City and Amsterdam.
Gutierrez is regarded as an animation pioneer in Mexico, being a founding partner of Ciberfilms, which is billed as being Mexico’s first digital production house. His first collaboration with Stukan, the commercial “Killing Death” for the Mexican Red Cross, earned the duo its slot in the Saatchi Showcase.
Other Showcase helmers include: Chris Cairns of Partizan, London; Henry Littlechild of Outsider, London and Santa Monica; David O’Reilly of Colonel Blimp/Blink, London; Mike Long of bicoastal Epoch Films; Shaun Gladwell of Revolver Film in Australia; Ralitza Petrova of Zoom, London; Sean de Sparengo of Therapy Films, London; Jamie Rafn of HLA, London; Huse of RSA Films, London; and Frenchman Alex Chandon, who scored with his live-action short, Borderline.
