Stacy Wall is no ordinary director—he’s a director who’s been to the agency side of the business and back. Wall, who now helms ads through bicoastal Epoch Films, started off his career as a copywriter, so when it comes to dealing with agency creatives during a shoot, he knows exactly where they’re coming from. "My background helps me in so many ways," he relates. "A lot of the time this job is about managing things from a client point of view, and because I come from the background, I think I have a healthy respect for the process that led to the job in the first place.
"I’m not just trying to be nice," continues Wall. "I know that every board that comes over for my consideration has been worked upon for three months or longer. I certainly have a strong point of view, and yeah, there’s always other ways you could do something, but there needs to be respect for the fact that this is the approved way. I don’t like to make the agency feel like they’re excluded from being around their baby."
It’s this collaborative attitude that has won Wall the respect of ad shops such as The Martin Agency, Richmond, Va.; Mother, London; and Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), New York. He helped launch the latter as a creative director several years ago, after working at the agency’s Portland, Ore., office for six years. Wall embarked on his directing career after taking a stab at the craft about two-and-a-half years ago, and has since done campaigns for, among others, Geico, ESPN and UPS.
It was late last year when producers at W+K, New York, approached Wall to helm "Coach," one of the spots in ESPN’s "Without Sports" campaign. "That’s the agency I used to work for and a brand I’d worked on for years, so it was nice that they would think of me," he says. "Coach" went on to earn an honor for editing at this year’s Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Show; the editor on the spot was Stephane Dumonceau of Mad River Post, New York.
The commercial features several sports fans following the same football game from their respective locations (i.e., at a bar, on a living room couch, in a cab). The ad cuts betweens these scenes, and shows the people yelling advice at their TV screen or radio. The tagline: "Without sports, there’d be no one to coach." "I’m a sports fan so I appreciate that there are times when they can be incredibly emotional about what they’re watching," Wall says. "It was nice to see ‘Coach’ come together in the end because I do think it taps into something that sports fans can certainly empathize with—and it was [a fun ad] to do."
STUDYING ABROAD
Wall recently got to work on his first overseas job: a new branding campaign for U.K. cell phone company Orange, through Mother, London. The series of ads was shot as a silly—but sincere—documentary on the "Orange Training Academy," a school that is run by Dylan, a no-nonsense 10-year-old boy, for adults who aspire to become Orange phone trainers. Wall was so proud of the work he did for Orange that four of his favorite ads from the campaign—"Quite An Honour," "The Lab," "Tom’s Cheese" and "Role Play"—ended up on his reel.
The intense curriculum at the Orange Training Academy has students chasing after gigantic bouncing orange balls, role-playing as cell phones, shooting model rockets into the air, and building cell phone microchips out of cookies. "But it all makes sense, perfect sense!" insists a student in one ad. "Dylan’s a genius," chimes in another. "I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve been sick twice."
"Fundamentally, we really did sort of set up a school, and once this reality existed for [the actors], we just let them be in it," Wall says about the project, which included a six-day shoot and about a month of prep time. "The actors were able to establish a tone that was funny, but it wasn’t like we were making fun of them. We were just trying to create sincerity—we were calling it the new sincerity movement."
When asked if being an American made it difficult for him to grasp the British sense of humor, Wall replies, "I’m a huge fan of British humor. After the first week of prep, my insecurities went away, I stopped worrying about that so much and I was able to trust my instincts."
Wall ended up cutting close to 20 commercials from the shoot (all of them were used), including one that was three-and-a-half minutes long, which actually aired during the entire length of a commercial break before the final episode of the U.K. version of Big Brother. "It was the longest commercial broadcast in British television history, so it’s supposedly a very well known and well liked campaign over there," Wall notes. "I’m proud of it, and it’s always nice to know that it is being appreciated on the air."
After having experienced so much in the world of production, Wall thinks he’s found his niche as a spot director. "I’m not looking to direct movies—there’s still so much more to do in commercials," he says. "I enjoy the commercial process, and I feel like it’s a world that I know. I like that you can try techniques and tones on commercials and explore those things, and next week you’re doing something completely different. So I think I’ll just concentrate on commercials for now."
