From guerrilla filmmaking to production "Opulence"
By Robert Goldrich
While Tim Godsall of Biscuit Filmworks is best known for his comedic sensibilities, there’s a range to that ad humor as reflected in the three spots that recently earned him a Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award nomination for best commercial director of 2010. Godsall became a first-time DGA nominee on the basis of DirecTV’s “Opulence” out of Grey New York, Hyundai’s “Bull” from Innocean Worldwide Americas, and HBO’s “Eastbound & Mom” for BBDO New York.
“Bull” has a voyeuristic guerilla filmmaking bent which showcases teenagers’ judgement–or more accurately the lack thereof–as the youngsters opt to jump over a fence and tease a not very amused bull. Meanwhile “Eastbound & Mom” is an over-the-top spot promoting a full season DVD release of the HBO series of the same name. In what Godsall describes as “a low-fi character promo,” a mom and dad recreate a crude scene from the show to entertain their son who becomes more embarrassed by the second. And “Opulence” is a tongue-in-cheek, production-rich character study of a wealthy Russian who has only the best of everything–to outrageous excess.
The latter was marked by a casting detour, according to Godsall. “We set out on a path to find an authentic Russian. I felt very strongly he had to be the real deal. But what we wound up with was a crumbling authentic Russian theory. We found an Irish guy in Los Angeles who put an accent on and totally fit the part. I was told he went out drinking with a Russian friend the night before the audition and got a crash tutorial on Russian brashness. He came out swinging during the audition, impressed us, and his performance rang true in the final commercial.”
Godsall credited Gary Naccarato, head of creative at Biscuit Filmworks, for selecting his entries for DGA consideration. “If he had a strategy, it was his own. I can tell you that when he sent me a link to the work for approval, I thought the selections were good and represented some of my best work of the year,” related Godsall. “There was a bit of breadth and scope to them. I liked each spot in different ways.”
Breadth and scope are what Godsall seeks as he continues to diversify his directorial reach beyond the humor niche which he loves and for which he is best known. “It’s natural to want to explore other types of storytelling,” he related. Perhaps the best example of Godsall departing from his norm is the visually driven Environmental Defense Fund/Ad Council viral spot “Polar Bears” for Ogilvy New York. “The concept had no dialogue, no comedy and no money. My challenge was to shoot a garbage bag and make it a moving experience.”
In the PSA, white plastic trash bags tied to subway grates on a NYC sidewalk come to life when the underground train passes. Air rushes up the grates to inflate the bags which take the form of a mother polar bear and her cub.
Onlookers gaze at the creatures whose existence is short lived. Soon the train is gone and the “creatures” deflate and return to being eyesore trash bags.
A series of parting supers promote riding on the subway: “Help Save The Planet”/”Ride, Don’t Drive”/fightglobalwarming.com.” The spot was honored in the AICP Show’s Viral/Web Film, PSA, and Agency Art Direction categories.
Creative chops Godsall is one to appreciate a good concept–both as a director and from his prior perspective as an agency creative. In fact, he and the other four nominees for this year’s DGA Award all came from agency creative ranks–directors Frank Budgen of Gorgeous (and Anonymous Content stateside), Craig Gillespie of MJZ, Tom Kuntz of MJZ, and Stacy Wall of Imperial Woodpecker. (Wall wound up winning the DGA Award–see separate profile of him in this SHOOT Special Section.)
Godsall has found his agency experience–freelancing at various shops and on staff as a writer and creative director mostly at Kirshenbaum, Bond & Partners, New York, in the mid-1990s–as being invaluable to him as a director.
“You’re aware of all the hurdles and impediments to getting something made–let alone, something good made,” explained Godsall. “I didn’t have a terribly long run as a creative so I wasn’t subjected to years and years of concepts being killed. But even in the short run, I gained an appreciation of how hard it is to get something into production.”
Godsall was at Kirshenbaum around the same time as a couple of other creatives who wound up becoming directors: Kuntz, as well as Brian Lee Hughes who is with Skunk.
The DGA nomination brought Godsall and Kuntz back together. “Most striking for me about becoming a DGA nominee was it being so nice to spend time with the other four directors,” said Godsall. “You don’t often spend time with other directors outside your company. The nominees, though, are corralled together for a few things during the course of the week leading up to the DGA Awards. It was great to catch up with Tom a few times. I had known Craig in passing but got to know him a little better. I’ve known Stacy for a long time but had never met Frank until the nomination events. Adding to everything is the tension of which nominee will win. But overall it’s a lot of fun and there’s some nice bonding. Part of the fun is awards night when you’re a few tables away from [feature film] nominees like David O. Russell [The Fighter] and Tom Hooper [who won the DGA Award for The King’s Speech].”
Going forward, the DGA nomination represents a new challenge for Godsall. “You try to live up to that nomination, and strive to perhaps get nominated again. It raises the bar, which I think is a good thing.”
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More