Itching to direct more than a 30-second spot? Read on to learn how your day job is prepping you.
Find yourself perusing IMDB when you should be reading creative briefs? Or making excuses to visit sets during your clients’ commercial shoots, at which you inevitably glue yourself to the director’s monitor?
Barry Avrich
You know you’re not alone. Most creatives have fantasized about a higher storyteller calling. The obstacles are many, of course. Little things like keeping yourself fed and clothed.
Never ones for rationale, Marketing spoke with two film-makers who have walked the line between the ad and film worlds and lived to tell the tale. Barry Avrich, president and CEO at Toronto agency Endeavour, has directed more than 20 documentaries while keeping up his day job in advertising.
Phil Connell, who previously ran operations as a VP at Olive Media, left to “chase the dream” last year when he began to devote himself to film full-time. A relative newbie to the director’s chair, he’s made a couple of short films, a couple of spec commercials and a music video, and admits that while it “never necessarily makes a lot of practical sense” to persue a filmmaking career when it’s so tough to earn a living, it fulfills him more than any traditional corporate gig could.
Phil Connell
Here’s how ad creatives can use their industry skills to blow all those film-school artistes out of the water.
A Commercial Mentality
Avrich has been in advertising since 1985 and says it’s given him a real understanding of how best to market his films. Unlike directors that get lost in the art of film-making, he’s well versed in how to roll out a teaser campaign and what goes into a film’s launch party and PR.
An Appreciation of Audience
Many filmmakers get so wrapped up in the story they want to tell, they neglect to consider whether anyone wants to watch it. Any astute marketer knows that understanding the potential market before rolling out a product is vital. “I’m not interested in trying to find an audience, I will only work on a project if I already know there’s an audience,” says Avrich.
The Importance of Buzz
As soon as you have an idea for a film, start creating buzz around it, says Avrich. It’s a lesson he’s learned from his career in entertainment advertising. “Every film I’ve worked on, I’ve generated a making-of story before we’ve even started filming,” he says.
Admit It, You’re Already a Storyteller
The most obvious correlation between the two fields: the importance of storytelling. Communicating corporate-level goals to board members using a narrative style in a 25-minute conversation prepares you well for taking film and condensing it into a three-line plot synopsis, says Connell.
Plan Twice, Cut Once
Tight production budgets typical of most ad shoots breed discipline that can be useful in filmmaking, too. Avrich storyboards everything for his films before they go into editing. Having a well-defined vision for the film really accelerates the process, he says. In fact, he generally films, posts and delivers his documentaries in six to seven months—much faster than many “traditional” filmmakers.
Share Your Vision
Giving a composer or editor a half-baked concept wastes everyone’s time and your money, says Avrich. Staying on budget means sharing a vision of what you want your film to turn out like with your team early on. Much like you’d show agency clients existing TV spots you love as a reference when you pitch them a campaign, Avrich suggests showing your film editor or composer samples of edited sequences or music tracks from other films that you like.
Making films and leading an agency life—or leaving the latter to pursue the former—may still sound like a pipe dream to many, but Avrich is undoubtedly hooked. Filmmaking, he says, satiates his need to keep the creative high his advertising work gives him. As he says (perhaps letting Hollywood get the better of him), “It’s a form of cocaine.”
