Christian Hoagland may not have won any industry awards yet, but if there’s a prize for sheer nerve, it should have his name already engraved on it.
Hoagland, who is with Redtree Productions, Boston and New York, is the director responsible for some of the more controversial ads in the "Truth" campaign for the American Legacy Foundation (ALF). The ALF is a group formed by 46 state attorneys general, and was born as a result of the settlement with the tobacco industry over state lawsuits filed against the tobacco companies. The ALF account, valued at $150-$250 million annually, is serviced by a number of agencies, with Arnold Communications, Boston, heading up the effort. Other shops working on the ALF account include: Crispin Porter+Bogusky Advertising (CPB), Miami; Burrell Communications, Chicago; Los Angeles-based Imada Wong; and Bromley Communications, San Antonio, Texas.
The guerilla-style spotsa"Body Bags" and "Lie Detector"ahelmed by Hoagland out of Arnold initially didn’t make it to the major networks, and the ALF pulled the ads just three days after they broke in February, when Philip Morris threatened legal action. (However, a version of "Body Bags" received a reprieve of sorts when NBC decided to air it during the Summer Olympic Games.)
Of the two ads, the most affecting is "Body Bags," which shows a group of high school-aged kids placing 1,200 body bags around an unidentified tobacco company’s headquarters to represent the number of deaths caused by cigarettes each day. Originally, the concept was to draw 1,200 chalk outlines around the building, explains Hoagland, but it was eventually decided that body bags would have more impact.
The spot was actually shot outside of Philip Morris’ New York offices, and although the location was not revealed in the ad, shooting there required maintaining a low profile. Hoagland says he was well aware of the potential for controversy going into it.
"I knew I probably wouldn’t be doing another Kraft or Miller spot," says Hoagland, referring to two Philip Morris-owned properties. "I think everybody had a sense that we were going up against a big corporation that has a lot of money and a history of taking people to court. Also we knew we were going to try to push the limits and be in their face. … Going in we definitely knew we were going to be bothering some people, and we made every attempt to make sure everything was legal."
Hoagland explains that getting the shoot to go smoothly required a great deal of preparation. Much of the camera work was done with hidden body cameras on the youngsters, so he trained the participants in using the technology. "I tried to teach the kids how to tell a story, how to follow the action of what’s going on. Look at the people, look at the bag when you carry it," he says.
"We tried to keep everything under the radar so almost all the cameras are hidden," explains Hoagland, although there were a couple of roving cameras at the shoot. "We basically operated just like you see it on the commercial. There’s really an energy to it, a rush to get everything in, because we didn’t know what [the people inside of] Philip Morris were going to do."
"Lie Detector" features a group of teens attempting to gain entry to a tobacco company in an attempt to administer a lie detector test to a VP of marketing. Then there’s also "Shredder" which shows the kids standing outside of the tobacco company’s office with an enormous shredderato help the executives shred incriminating documents, memos and even entire file cabinets. And "Hypnosis," features a van with a Truth label on it driving around tobacco executives’ homes, with a loudspeaker blaring a hypnotic tape encouraging them to get new jobs that they won’t be ashamed of.
After all that work, Hoagland admits it’s very frustrating that the spots didn’t run on as large a scale as he had hoped. "I was heartbroken that the nationals wouldn’t take it," he says. "It’s one thing when you’re doing commercials for selling hamburgers or cars, but it’s another when you’re doing it to save a life."
Another series of Hoagland-helmed ALF "Truth" adsadubbed the "Web Letter Campaign"afeatures different teens talking about tobacco-related issues on a Web site, www.truth.com. These ads, which include "Vanessa/Crawl," "Venus/Tolerance," "Larc/Cars" and "Mike/Responsibility," are filmed to appear as though they were shot with a Webcam. They have proven to be less controversial. The director also recently wrapped work on three spots for the Florida Tobacco Pilot Program, via CPB. The ads, "Golden Fishhook," "Golden Sloth," and "Golden Shovel," which all feature teens giving fictitious awards to tobacco execs for the harm that cigarettes have caused, and capturing the footage of the presentation on hidden camera.
Hoagland’s anti-tobacco idealism started way back when he was a kid in Salt Lake City. "I was actually raised by a parent who was smoking in a Volkswagen Beetle, and I used to ask her to roll down the window," Hoagland remembers. "I’m that perfect case of a kid who got exposed to second-hand smoke and didn’t have an opportunity to get away from it. When you’re stuck inside a car, there’s not a lot of room."
Hoagland’s issue-related fare is well suited to his styleahe loves working with real people. He got his start in the genre, he says, through luck. Straight out of New York University Film School, Hoagland landed his first paying job shooting a documentary on the anthropological effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill on the town of Valdez, Alaska, which aired on Britain’s Channel 4. When MTV learned of Hoagland’s ability to shoot film, the network hired him to shoot MTV Sports, which was hosted by Dan Cortez.
"I got known for doing the MTV Sports stuff, and from that Burger King came and said, ‘Can you turn MTV Sports into BKTV?’ So, at the age of twenty-seven, I got a national Burger King campaign for a year and a half," explains Hoagland, who did the job as a freelancer. After that, New York-based The Directors’ Chair, a division of EUE/ Screen Gems, New York, knocked on Hoagland’s door, and "then I got known as a real-people director," he says. He signed with Redtree for commercial work in 1996. (Hoagland also maintains an affiliation with Beyond Our Reality Productions, New York, for promo work.)
While the "Truth" campaign has been keeping him busy, Hoagland has shot other work in the past year. Last November he shot "Arrow" for Direct Hit via Boston-based Gearon Hoffman, and Pinnacle’s "Across the World," through Arnold. The Pinnacle work is documentary style, featuring Jason Zuback, the world champion long-ball driver, trying to shoot a golf ball past Big Ben.
On deck for Hoagland are a few more ALF anti-tobacco ads through Burrell Communications, Chicago. In the midst of all this, Hoagland says he’s started writingaso don’t rule out a feature one of these days. But so far, Hoagland remains most proud of his work on "Body Bags." "When I see it, I still get goosebumps," he says. "For me, what’s really special [about these spots] is you don’t normally get the opportunity to do commercials that save people’s lives."
