They really wanted to get away from showing just the super-best professional athletes," explains director Mike Mills of The Directors Bureau, Hollywood, referring to the concept behind adidas’ "Forever Sport" campaign via 180, Amsterdam. "They wanted to do something that was more humane—just people who are interested in sports, but who aren’t [necessarily] the best at it. And getting that opportunity was really good for me because I didn’t just have to show really slick images that are all about ambition and being the best at something."
Intended only as an international campaign, the U.S. adidas office picked up the spots to air stateside. The visually arresting "Take What You Want" features slow-motion shots of karate kicks, divers diving into swimming pools, fights at football games, kids kicking soccer balls on their beds, water gun fights, Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers playing a game of one-on-one with an adolescent, bikers racing, tennis players serving, skateboarders flying, and other feats of athleticism. As the images fade into one another, supered phrases fade in and out, offering messages such as "Take the local championship," "Take the World Cup," "Take it seriously," "Take it very seriously," "Take it easy my friend," and "Take what you want."
Mills, who never attended film school, began his career as a graphic designer. After graduating from Cooper Union, New York, in ’92 with a bachelor of fine arts degree, he began designing record sleeves for bands ranging from Sonic Youth and the Beastie Boys to Cibo Mato and Boss Hog. Mills also worked on designing clothes for X-Girl, the fashion label from Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon, and with designer Marc Jacobs. Despite this diversity, Mills was still not satisfied. He says he was always "more interested and involved with the content than with how things looked. Obviously I was involved in how things look, but what I really liked was the ideas."
Graphic Works
Mills traded in his graphic design desk for the director’s chair: "You can only do so much of the idea [in graphics work]." After seeing Errol Morris’s documentary The Thin Blue Line, a graphics-oriented film, Mills thought, "’Oh shit, I should be doing films.’"
He convinced some of the bands, which he designed record covers for, to direct short films or videos for them. "You can really play out an idea more [in film] than you can in most graphic projects—sort of tell stories or just have concepts," says Mills, who eventually moved from music videos to spotwork.
In the past year, Mills directed The Gap’s "Khaki-A-Go-Go" for the retailer’s in-house agency; "Ledge," "Demolition Derby" and "Mountain Man" for Nike’s "What Are You Getting Ready For?" campaign out of Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore.; as well as spots for Miller Lite and DuPont.
His latest effort is a three-spot package for The Gap, comprised of "Mambo," "Cool" and "America." The new ads are a tribute to the musical West Side Story, and feature dancers filling "these humongous sets and working with a great choreographer. It feels very Broadway, and that’s something I haven’t really done before, so it’s fun," says Mills.
Despite being one of the few directors asked to return to direct another Gap spot, Mills says, "I don’t think they’re going to use me again. I’ve done four after this upcoming job, so I don’t feel like I have to do any more. It’d be great if the next thing I do is something totally different."
The last thing Mills wants is to be easily stereotyped. "I try really hard not to be categorizable. I feel like that’s a real trap." With his adidas work being more visual, the Nike ads more humor-based; and the Gap more fantastic and glitzy, he appears to have achieved a balance in his spotwork. "My goal would be to keep doing stuff that keeps you guessing."
Mills is particularly pleased to have been a part of the Nike campaign. "[The ads were] very simple, and the humor was really good. It didn’t have jokes but it was very funny. When [that campaign] happened, it was very new-feeling to do something that simple and that realistic. Now I feel like everybody’s doing that."
"Mountain Man" shows Pittsburgh Steelers running back Jerome Bettis jumping off a mountain ledge, tumbling down and bouncing off huge rocks amid scattered tree stumps and bushes, then finally getting to the bottom, dusting himself off and running back up again. "Demolition Derby" features Detroit Lions running back Barry Sanders in a racecar, repeatedly crashing into other cars and flipping over. The campaign’s tagline—"What Are You Getting Ready For?"—appears at the end of each spot.
Mills doesn’t have many influences—"I don’t have a TV. I don’t really watch very many other commercial people"—but cites Roman Coppola, also of The Directors Bureau, Spike Jonze of bicoastal/international Satellite, and Michel Gondry of bicoastal/international Partizan as helmers whose work he admires.
Among Mills’ recent music video credits are clips for the French instrumental duo Air, Moby, Pulp, Everything But The Girl, and Les Rhythmes Digitales. He also completed a short film, The Architecture of Reassurance, which screened at this year’s Sundance film festival.
"I’m trying to get some kind of feature thing going," says Mills. "I’d love to keep doing commercials and music videos as well as features and documentaries. I think the best part of what I do is an extension of wanting each spot to not be the same. I want my whole career to be a bunch of different things happening. I think [that] keeps me more agile. If I just fell into doing the same thing all the time, it’s not as interesting and I’m not as interesting."c
