By Alison Sloane Gaylin

In the year he’s spent directing ads out of Independent Media, Santa Monica, feature film director Scott Hicks has made us cheer for a soapbox derby underdog (Hummer H2’s "Happy Jack," via Modernista!, Boston), showed us the perfect way to make peace with a spouse (AT&T’s "Married Couple," out of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco) and introduced us to a surprising family pet ("Skunk," for PBS, out of Fallon, Minneapolis). And though his subject matter is as diverse as the products advertised, Hicks has made one thing perfectly clear: He likes to tell a good story.

So, Hicks’ latest project—a series of Revlon spots via Deutsch, New York—seems like a major departure. Could this Oscar-nominated director who thrives on storytelling be moving on to more visually based work?

"Actually, no," says Hicks, who was in postproduction on the package at press time. "It’s an interesting change for Revlon because they came to me and asked if we could create a story." Devised as "a series of miniature films," according to the director, the plot-driven spots subtly incorporate Revlon products while boasting talent like Halle Berry and Julianne Moore. "The brief was to make the product as organic to the story as possible," Hicks shares. "I think it’s going to be interesting."

Though he’s a relative newcomer to spotmaking, Hicks has been using a camera to tell stories for more than 20 years. Born in Uganda and raised in Australia, he crewed for director Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy) before making his own shorts, low-budget films and documentaries (including the Peabody Award-winning The Great Wall of Iron, and Submarines: Sharks of Steel, which earned an Emmy). In 1996, he achieved international success with the Academy Award-nominated Shine, and later went on to make Snow Falling on Cedars and Hearts in Atlantis.

But it wasn’t until he got a call from Independent Media executive producer Susanne Preissler that Hicks considered the creative potential of commercials. "Apparently, she’d been calling my agents for over a year to see if I was interested, and nobody ever passed that on," he relates. "But at one stage, one of them finally did say, ‘Look, are you interested in doing any of these things?’ And I said, ‘Sure. I’ll give it a try.’ "

In the detail

Give it a try he did, with the highly innovative "Happy Jack." Accompanied by The Who’s song of the same name, "Happy Jack" revolves around a young boy who fashions a soapbox Hummer and becomes the surprise winner of the derby by taking his contraption off-road. "It was a brilliant piece of creative to work from," Hicks praises. "I loved the idea that there was no [real] car in the commercial."

Since the creatives at Modernista!—creative directors/art directors Gary Koepke and Will Uronis, and creative directors/copywriters Lance Jensen and Shane Hutton—wanted "to make the Hummer more charming," casting became key, says Hicks. He looked for a soapbox hero who "was able to give a sort of edge to [the material], while at the same time remain completely empathetic," and found those qualities in Bryce Hodgson, a young actor who had been featured in the film X2. "He just stood out in the audition process to me," the director recalls. "I saw complete belief in his eyes in what he was doing."

Still, Hicks reports, "it was one of those situations where the agency took some convincing. There was a little bit of reservation about whether his dark, good looks were appropriate. I just said, ‘Look. This is the boy who can do the job, and I’m totally confident in his ability.’"

When creatives suggested adding "more of the logos and finish" to the soapbox Hummer—"black glass and so on"—Hicks had to make another stand. "We sort of put that stuff on and gradually tore it off," he says. "The original idea was so bold as it was conceived by them, and I wanted to keep faith with that."

Production designer Barbara Ling, a fellow feature film vet (Hearts In Atlantis; Batman & Robin) who has since worked with Hicks on all his spots, created the miniature wooden Hummer, its competition, and even the racetrack from scratch. "We were shooting in Vancouver, and it was very wet," Hicks remembers. "We could not find a location that would give us the traction we needed. So Barbara walked up a hill, planted flags to show the survey team where to cut the road, and then we built it.

"All the vehicles that Barbara designed and created had small electric motors, so we could get them off to speed, and back up the hill again," he continues. "The Hummer had a four-stroke engine—it was quite a machine. I said, ‘You should be marketing that.’ And if they could’ve got the price tag under a hundred grand, they probably would have."

Moments when the off-roader nearly collided with other racers were not, as one might assume, added in post. "We thought about compositing different passes, but in the end, we just shot it real," Hicks relates. "I really liked that because it kept the authentic energy of it."

"Happy Jack" marked the start of a prolific period. "It’s a whole new world, really," Hicks says of directing spots. "Executing an idea within these microcapsules of thirty and sixty seconds—I’ve really enjoyed getting to know that process."

In choosing advertising projects, Hicks says he’s drawn to the ones that offer an element of surprise—and challenge. Indeed, for the newly launched Altoids cinema spot, "Myron Danger," via Leo Burnett USA, Chicago, he created a highly theatrical carnival world populated with strange characters, the strangest of which turns out to be the eponymous devourer of "curiously strong" Altoid mints. "I’m so used to directing drama, and I’ve spent all my life trying to work with actors towards realistic performance, so it was really good fun to let it go over the top," he states.

Getting realistic performances are what a series of Hicks-directed AT&T Wireless spots are all about since, as he points out, they’re "predicated on not using the telephone." "Married Couple," for instance, shows a man and woman in separate places, in the aftermath of an argument. As the wife sits in a meeting, her husband materializes out of nowhere, holding up signs which read, "I’m sorry," and "I’m an idiot." When the camera returns to the woman, we see she’s actually reading his text messages. "It was hard to pull the switch between the person, seemingly present, then realizing that they’re not, and having it all make sense," says Hicks.

Even more challenging was PBS’ "Puppet," in which a marionette frees himself from his strings. That ad entailed "trying to get a performance out of a piece of wood." (Hicks was arguably working with more difficult talent in "Skunk," though he reports that the animal who played the unconventional house-pet was a "professional skunk, who had done TV," and, most importantly, "had been de-perfumed.")

With the help of regulars like Ling, Preissler and line producer Lindsay Skutch, Hicks hopes to tackle many more challenging—and gratifying—commercial projects in the future. "Really good creative and a really good team of people in terms of production and design, and cinematography—all the elements that are important when you’re making a movie—are of the same importance in this miniature world," he observes.

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