Nicolai Fuglsig of MJZ is now two for two in his career–twice nominated for the DGA Commercial Director of the Year and twice winning the coveted honor, this time around for Guinness’ “Sapeurs” from AMV BBDO, London, and FEMA’s “Waiting” out of Deutsch New York. Fuglsig’s first DGA Award came in 2007.
Fuglsig’s win last month continues a run of excellence for MJZ directors who have taken the DGA Award for Commercials five of the past 10 years. During that stretch, Fuglsig becomes the first MJZ director to repeat as a DGA winner.
Receiving the Guild honor this year “came as a big surprise,” said Fuglsig in that he was busy for much of 2014 shooting his first feature film. “I had little time to do commercials last year.”
Furthermore, Fuglsig didn’t have good memories of the Guinness spot due to extraneous circumstances, including his producer getting robbed at gunpoint during the shoot. “It was a painful experience. I wanted to bury the project but it was David Zander [MJZ president] who sent it in [to the DGA].”
Zander also submitted FEMA’s “Waiting,” a poignant PSA that departed from the subject matter’s disaster norm. “Usually when you do that kind of spot, you go for big impact, exterior shots of a catastrophic storm system. But we didn’t have the money for that. So we concentrated solely on the human story, away from the visual effects-driven, big impact disaster movie stuff. It was instead an observational piece, sort of eavesdropping on other people’s fortunate or unfortunate circumstance in a shelter after a natural disaster. We hear one family desperately looking for a loved one. It hit home the importance of having a plan ahead of time–a meeting place to get together in the event of an earthquake, a hurricane, any disaster. A great idea combined with a great cast made the film work so well. Without saying a word, a married couple–with their kids at a shelter–subtly convey the pain they feel when they hear another family talk about a lost child. Also without a word, we see how grateful they are that their family is intact.”
Feature prospects; spotmaking return
Meanwhile Hollywood certainly overheard the results of the DGA Award proceedings. “It seemed like as soon as I got out of the press room backstage, I got calls. I’ve heard from financiers, movie producers who wanted me to look at their projects. I’ve had some amazing meetings,” said Fuglsig.
But well prior to those productive meetings, Fuglsig had already taken a leap of faith, deciding to pursue his own long-form aspirations, self-financing GUNDOG, the alluded to theatrical motion picture project that took up most of his schedule over the past year. Though he wasn’t at liberty to publicly discuss the sci-fi themed GUNDOG in detail at press time, Fuglsig anticipates the film coming out later this year with involvement from an undisclosed studio and through what he thinks will be regarded as “a controversial method of distribution.”
With that theatrical release on the horizon, Fuglsig has kicked off 2015 with a major return to commercialmaking via MJZ. As SHOOT went to press, he was about to embark on what he described as “a lyrical piece with a social message” for Heineken. And he recently wrapped his first virtual reality (VR) job, a nearly four-minute piece for EA Games which is about to debut. He shared that the VR project deployed a new camera system/rig that will revolutionize the 360-degree perspective.
“I’m blown away with the opportunities created by 360 filming and with the overall potential of virtual reality beyond typical CG. We did live-action VR in a real environment, with visual effects action around the live-action core. I’m excited to be back examining the new opportunities that are emerging in advertising and branding.”
