Director Stephan Malik has joined Wondros for commercials and branded content. His work has aired on the Olympics (Oral-B), Super Bowl (Samsung) and Oscars (AT&T) telecasts, as well as garnering recognition from the Cannes Lions (Coca-Cola) and AICP Show (Truth campaign) competitions.
Malik’s visual perspective stems from his upbringing with his deaf mother who challenged him to communicate imaginatively. His past shines through in the imagery he creates. Malik studied sound and music in Los Angeles before cutting his teeth in the editing room early in his career. Since then, he has directed campaigns for Apple, Facebook, AT&T, Toyota, Red Bull, Samsung, NASA, Google, and others. Malik has collaborated with ad agency creatives from TBWAMedia Arts Lab, BBDO, Arnold, Leo Burnett, & 72&Sunny to name just a few.
“I have a strong photographic influence,” explained Malik. “When I am developing an approach for a project, I often begin with a wall littered with visual references. My office quickly starts to look like a teenager’s bedroom. I’m always sketching up frames and cobbling together scrapbooks of imagery that we could feed into the project. I think that stems from my childhood growing up with a mother who can’t hear you. It was hard for her to understand me, so I found myself presenting these wild ideas to her on paper in order to illustrate something I wanted…and with a lot of waving arms and pantomime.”
Malik’s approach on-set is similar. “I quite enjoy hammering out the possibilities, brainstorming and work-shopping an idea until you’ve broken through to the other side,” he enthused. “I like to get behind a big idea and see what we can do with it — how far we can push it.”
Danielle Peretz, EP of Wondros’ commercial/branded content division, described filmmaker, photographer and designer Malik as “a real explorer of all things creative. He is a filmmaker, a photographer and a designer. Additionally, he is wonderful to collaborate with, a director who is thoughtful, kind, and a great listener.”
While he is active in films, Malik has a passion for the art of advertising. “The beauty of making advertising is that we get the opportunity to affect millions of people with our work,” he said. “But we need to provide audiences a form of entertainment through our spots, so they will be less likely to skip and more open to engage with the product. There always has to be a balanced exchange of sugar and sustenance for viewers to empathize with the work.”
Prior to joining Wondros, Malik had been freelancing. Earlier he was at harvest. Back in 2012, Malik earned inclusion into SHOOT’s New Directors Showcase.
