on camera who is stubborn enough—or stupid enough—to wait for when the lights are good."
Saarinen co-founded Plum Productions in ’83 with president/executive producer Chuck Sloan. Saarinen was the company’s sole director for many years. Plum eventually expanded its spot directorial roster which now also includes Bob Rice, Nick Piper, cinematographer and feature director Jan de Bont (Speed, Twister) and documentarian Nick Broomfield (Kurt & Courtney; Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam).
Over the past six years, Saarinen has directed scores of commercials, including Jeep’s "Snow Covered" out of Bozell Worldwide (now FCB Worldwide Detroit), Southfield, Mich., which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes International Advertising Festival in ’94. The spot features an unseen Jeep—created in CG by Digital Domain, Venice, Calif.—burrowing under layers of snow, and stopping and turning at a stop sign that pokes above the snow’s surface. "Since that spot, I’ve become well-versed. You learn all the tricks."
But he doesn’t believe a director should rely on those tricks to the exclusion of ideas. "The story is what attracts me," Saarinen explains. "You always face the challenge of trying to cut through the clutter to get something interesting that hasn’t been seen before."
Though he feels that agencies have typecast him as an automobile director—"I’ve been placed in the car box"—he also believes he has helped change the look of those commercials: "[They] used to show the sheet metal and tell you about air bags and mileage. That’s no longer valid. People don’t care. What they care about is the image."
One of Saarinen’s most challenging spots was "Animals," the Fiat commercial which showed a harried commuter—astride a tiger—trying to beat a traffic light by passing a man riding a lion. Amid the chaos, a man cruises by in his Fiat Punto. "A city full of people riding animals," sighs Saarinen. "That was a huge effects job, hugely complicated."
But he was not daunted by it and never says never to a new demand. "In terms of work, you have to be flexible. I’ve been in several situations where it’s all been worked out beforehand and then everything changes and you have ten seconds to say the same thing in a different way. I think I know how to improvise, especially after doing all those Roger Corman movies. As long as the story drives how you do it, there’s always a way."c
