boy at a motel pool. He approaches the low diving board dramatically, gathering the attention of the other guests. Once on the board, he throws a handful of Snack’Ums into the air, does an elaborate dive, catches the snacks in his mouth—then belly-flops into the pool.
"High Dive" shares an accent on character with Jann’s pets.com work. The director prefers to work outward from the character, creating a full world to support a spot’s premise. With such an emphasis on character, casting is crucial, and Jann says that he tries to look beyond the normal choices to find people who will embody the characters he wants, even if they aren’t skilled actors. The boy in the Kellogg’s spot, for example, was found by a production manager Jann had sent out with a video camera to visit pools and interview kids. "It’s really an intense effort," he says of casting, "but if you’re looking for something special, you really have to throw the net out as far as it can possibly be thrown."
Jann doesn’t like being hemmed in. He recounts a recent disappointing experience where he pitched an idea over the phone to an unidentified agency, and everybody loved it. Unfortunately, the agency didn’t relate the idea to the client, who rejected the idea when they finally did hear of it. Jann responded by pitching several more ideas, but by that time he sensed that the agency was far too afraid of the client to accept them. The director essentially threw up his hands and just did what he was told. The agency and the client were satisfied with the result; Jann was not. The story led him to a point he makes frequently when talking about directing: "You have to be fluid, you have to want to make things better."
In recent work he has generally been allowed that freedom. In Jann’s view, this success has flowed in large part from his experience directing the feature film Drop Dead Gorgeous, a mockumentary about a Minnesota beauty pageant. Jann says that the film gave him an enormous amount of confidence and brought him a fuller consciousness of how to create a whole world around a premise. "Having done the movie, my spots are two hundred percent better," he says, adding that the support staff he’s put together since making the film has also been committed to "stepping up their game."
With two more feature projects in development—one about fencing, and another about a rock journalist—and bright prospects in the spot world, these are good times for Jann. "I really feel like I’m creatively starting to crest a wave," he says.c
