Moving upward on both sides of the Atlantic
By Robert Goldrich
Adam Foulkes and Alan Smith, best known as the directing team of Smith & Foulkes at London studio Nexus Productions, are no strangers to the industry awards show circuit, having been at the forefront of commercial animation for some time. But two honors–one a major win in 2005, the other a nomination outside the spotmaking milieu this year–have put them on the filmmaking map in different ways.
The first was the Grand Prix honor at the Cannes International Advertising Festival which was bestowed upon their now classic Honda spot “Grrr” out of Wieden+Kennedy, London.
The fanciful animated ad tells the story of how Kenichi Nagahiro, an engineer at Honda, hated what were then the standard diesel engines. So he wound up creating a new, more efficient diesel model, the VTEC.
The spot featured diesel engines flying through a colorful landscape filled with bunnies and rainbows while a catchy tune, performed by Garrison Keillor, asks, “Can Hate be good?” The answer, in the form of a new engine, is yes. (The Cannes win, incidentally came on the heels of “Grrr” earning best of show at The One Show, the Grand Clio, the GRANDY at the ANDY Awards, an AICP Show honor for international advertising excellence, and two coveted Black Pencils at London’s D&AD Awards.)
This widespread international recognition further spurred on a career in commercials for Smith and Foulkes that has produced assorted memorable projects, including the Coca-Cola “Video Game” spot which helped re-establish Coke as a feel-good brand as well as an impactful Super Bowl advertiser in ’07.
Fast forward to January ’09 and Smith and Foulkes enjoyed another career defining honor–though it remains to be seen what the results of that defining might be. The directing duo received their first Academy Award nomination for This Way Up, a 3D animated short that’s a wonderful slapstick adventure following father and son undertakers as they battle a series of mishaps while trying to deliver a coffin to the graveyard.
The Oscar nom “opened up all these doors,” said Foulkes.
Smith concurred, noting that these doors probably would have opened up eventually but the Academy recognition opened them up much sooner.
One such door was that of Creative Artists Agency (CAA in Beverly Hills, Calif.), which signed the duo for long-form representation and introduced them when they came out to Los Angeles for the Oscars, said Smith, “to anyone and everyone in animated feature films. We got the chance to introduce ourselves, to tell people what we’re about, and to get their advice as well. We’ve been looking to get in features at Nexus as an extension of our work in commercials and this accelerated the timetable. Now we’re working on ideas, and seeing properties, books and scripts.”
In two or three months, once they have sorted out their options, Smith and Foulkes will likely come back out to Los Angeles in order to get a better handle on what long-form opportunity to pursue, if any.
What’s certain, they said, is their continued involvement in spots.
“For many years, commercials have been our creative lifeblood. It’s a discipline we value and want to keep active in,” affirmed Smith.
Indeed their latest ad-making endeavors represent a wide creative range. For one, the Comcast campaign out of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, brings live-action performers into an animated world known as Comcast Town. Singing a lively tune, the actors take us through this town in a single continuous shot sans any cuts.
With other animated creations–such as VHS tapes, kung fu ninjas, penguins, giant manga squirrels, dancing ice cream cones and spaceman–coming into play as an ensemble supporting cast, a whimsical world unfolds before our eyes, with the live-action performers still serving as the focal point, branding Comcast in quite a different way than before.
Yet whimsical can be complex as Smith & Foulkes set out to build this world in an isometric style often associated with illustration and gaming, visually representing three-dimensional subjects and objects within the framework of two dimensions.
“There was a huge technical side to this job,” said Foulkes. “What we liked very much was the chance to choreograph people’s movements and to direct live-action performance which we don’t always get the opportunity to do as people often think of us as just animation directors. I like the fact that this kind of work gets us thought of in a broader range.”
This represented the second recent live-action opportunity for Smith & Foulkes who earlier helmed Coca-Cola’s “Avatar” [a Super Bowl commercial for Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore.], bringing people together with their online avatar alter egos and other characters.
In stark contrast to the feel good continuation of the Coca-Cola “Happiness”-themed ad campaign, Smith & Foulkes just wrapped a U.K. Department of Transport package of PSAs for Leo Burnett, London, which poignantly conveys the importance of road safety for kids.
In one public service spot, for example, we are introduced to an animated lad who didn’t stop, look and listen before crossing the street. The youngster is on crutches and before the accident, he was athletic and loved to play football. He cannot anymore because his leg was bent backwards and broken in multiple places. Now all he can do is watch others play the game he loved, as we see a soccer ball roll towards him. He is unable to kick it or even pick it up.
Smith and Foulkes noted that their years of commercialmaking have given them more discipline in their approach to storytelling.
“Every frame has to have a purpose, you dissect stuff down to its essence, you have three seconds to set a tone, another few seconds to establish a character,” related Smith. “And the nature of the commercials we do is so different, one experience informs the next for us as directors. We are constantly learning and growing.”
Thus when they had the opportunity to direct This Way Up, eight-plus minutes of screen time seemed like a major luxury.
“You have more time to show facial expressions and to convey emotions,” observed Foulkes.
“You can stay with something a bit longer on film but our work in commercials has helped us to not stay on something too long, to make sure that we stayed relevant to the story with our images.”
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle โ a series of 10 plays โ to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More