Face to Face with… Phil Griffin

From dancer to photographer to director, Phil Griffin has helmed promos for musical royalty including Annie Lennox, Prince, Paul McCartney and Amy Winehouse. Now after two years filming documentaries in LA, Griffin is back in the UK and signed to Serious Pictures. shots.net caught up with the director to talk technology, quality and content.

You've been in LA for the past couple of years shooting documentaries on Bon Jovi and Britney Spears. How was that experience?

Jon Bon Jovi saw a photograph I had taken of him - very candid and simple - and he asked if I could make a film that real. I didn't know anything about how to construct a story over 90 minutes but knew if I stuck to the approach of that photograph, simplicity and honesty, it could work. Documentary work is the opposite to music videos, where you are often focusing on totally re-inventing the artist for one song. Music videos are like poems - all about interpretation. With long form you are trying to tell a complete story, attempting to unravel the myths and mayhem.

Ultimately you are trying to get to the truth, which is often withheld through fear or shame or just insecurity. If you are lucky you gain your subjects trust then it becomes interesting - it's a dance where sometimes you (as filmmaker) lead and sometimes you (as confidante) desperately try to follow. At the end of the day, it's a singular point of view of a life or situation and my approach has been to try to put the viewer into the film with the artist, so the point of view becomes one we all share as we experience the film


How does the documentary process differ from that of your music videos, and what attracted you to documentaries?

Making these long form pieces definitely changed the way I think about work. It's a bit of a marathon and incredibly intense but it makes you think about what you need to make a scene work rather than what you would like to shoot - the difference is much bigger than we all think at first. The biggest effect I guess has been to simplify my whole approach, I learned that with storytelling it's often what you leave out that says the most.

My latest film for ITV, Boyzone Life After Stephen, about the loss of Stephen Gateley, was much easier to make because of all the shortcuts I had learnt on the first two. It was a very personal film because I had known the guys since their very first release 16 years ago. That connection did make it harder but I hope knowing them so well, and with the benefit of the tools I picked up on the Bon Jovi and Britney films, I was able tell their story just a little more sensitively


Now you're back in London, what are your plans? Any particular style of scripts you are on the lookout for?

I know now that I want to be a storyteller. I love the challenge of narrative in both the films and strangely in my portrait work. I think a good picture tells you the story of the sitter, in an instant. I love the fact that I had to make two 90 minute marathons to learn that!

The film work continues, I am writing and proposing ideas all the time, one will evolve to the point of commission but you never know which one it's going be so you have to keep writing crazy ideas until one connects.

I am so glad to have made the Boyzone film, because it finally bought me home and made me an English filmmaker again. It's important for me to work in our British environment - I really believe there is a British approach. It's so much more direct, but still has the ability to be sensitive. I'm looking forward to scripts that have stories, I love that I spent a long apprenticeship in the music video arena learning how to make film "look good" because that discipline makes every script shine.


You've directed promos for some of the world's biggest stars - what's been your favourite and why?

It's impossible to have favourites, like choosing between your kids… but... Annie Lennox, Amy Winehouse and Paul McCartney between them give me the best memories because in each case I was honoured to be responsible for the visual dreams of people who I really admired; these were more like personal projects than commissioned pieces. I am always passionate about any artist because coming from an ex-dancer's point of view I understand what it takes to stand up and be stared at. I hope that's one of the reasons I work so hard to get good performances, I know what it's like to look back at yourself and be disappointed, elated or more often than not just satisfied.


You've just helmed an interactive promo for McFly, tell us a bit about it…

McFly are brave and forward-thinking guys. With this video I wanted to embrace modern technology. If you look back, the whole idea of the music video as a form was to allow people to see the band when they were otherwise unavailable. I don't think we as videomakers have developed with the technology as fast as we should have. The internet is a massive part of our platform now, the decision to view is no longer controlled by a third party. We don't invite an audience, they seek us out. Viewers make choices not broadcasters. For McFly I loved the idea that we would make a video as "live", sending out a live web stream of the shoot and inviting an audience to find our physical location via a series of clues. On the day we had 45,000 hits on the webcast and an average of 5,000 viewers connected at any one time.

Now we have to edit it into a piece and then think about how our webcasts and the documentary we shot on the day can all come together!

I did a similar thing in the US recently for a New York Hospital - a broadcast spot was the original commission but it soon became a spot plus three short films that all worked together, but still stood alone. I really enjoy the process of working across mediums and finding ways of merging audiences. Allowing the commercial to invite the audience into a broader experience of the product became a part of our focus. In this case, as a cancer hospital, the extra content was fascinating and humbling and I knew when we started it could never be fully explored in a 60-second spot and loved making the films about real people doing real things to save lives.


And with the recent slew of great interactive promos, what do you predict for the future of promo-making?

I think the real story is not just the future of promo, it's the future of so called "content". In itself I feel the moniker content is a little degrading but it's stuck so let's try to rebuild its image by focusing on quality rather than quantity. In the main I feel you have to work interactively now. At the end of the day the 360 degree broadcast to broadband platform is our world now and recognising it is the only way to keep the audience fully engaged.

The trick is not to lose sight of quality and integrity in the filmmakers product along the way. It feels a bit like when TV "serial drama" kicked off with something like good old Crossroads Motel (British soap opera) and its dodgy sets that moved if you breathed. As a new form Crossroads was allowed to be dodgy because no one knew any better. But as the form developed the tastes of the audience became harder to fool. That audience demanded improvements. Now through a path that includes A Play for Today, Coronation Street, The Bill, Eastenders et al we have Skins and Shameless and This Is England - cutting edge drama specifically for TV.

I really believe the same has to happen with content.

The "content" will have to improve and become "programming" because the demand increases. The audience will expect the same quality online as on the box - the merger in the technology that we view and consume all our content/programming on will see to that.

Ultimately I think if you trust in quality before quantity, it will sort itself out. With digital revolution after digital revolution any one can be a filmmaker, photographer or documentarian. However at the end of the day, it is a unique point of view, a way of seeing if you like, that makes people sit up and listen. A lightweight fully automatic Canon 5D camera in the hand of the sub-editor's nephew Henry whose "doing media" at university does not a movie make. As harsh as that sounds, the truth is we have to keep our eyes on quality if modern "auteurs" are going to survive the turf wars of how and what and where we broadcast our content.


Have you read anything lately or heard any new music that you would recommend to shots readers?

Liam Lever, Daley, and Ellie Goulding are who I am listening to right now. Liam isn't signed, Daley is just and Ellie is already well onto her own path. All of them are quietly cool, writing about their experiences and web savvy enough to charter their own course. John Irving's latest Last Night in Twisted River and Until I Find You are suitably old-fashioned "proper novels" and his writing style is so visual I feel like I am in the movie with Michael Caine and Juliette Binoche already.


What's been inspiring you recently?

I think what inspires me most lately is watching the world that is around me every day. Taking half an hour to sit in the park with a real newspaper and seeing everyday people getting on with it in a not so everyday world.

Every single person has a uniqueness that is now available to view and understand on digital and on terra firma. Taking the time to watch is what directors are supposed to do to learn how to tell stories. I think one of the digital ages biggest distractions is that we look inward more and more and outward less and less. On the flipside, one of the great things about the world wide web we are caught in (it wasn't called a web for nothing Mr Fly!) is how it allows us all to consume art and intellect and each other at our own pace, but we should keep our toes moving lest we get caught and trapped in cyberspace for ever.

On the one hand I am excited by talking to broad spectrums of people, about a broad spectrum of ideas all in glorious high speed broadband, and feel lucky to have grown up in an art era that is changing faster than we can keep up with. I love that I am exposed to Man Ray, Monet and Munch, Warhol, Whitehead, Emin and Banksy all presented as equals and that I am able to embrace each in their own voice. I love the fact that what mass access does do is really sort the wheat from the chaff to make us all responsible for our own opinions, but it does scare me how dependent we are on it.

I have to really discipline myself these days not to watch re-runs of Friends while writing a script, downloading an edit, putting the tea on, keeping an eye on Facebook, hearing iChat ping in the background and confusing that with a Skype call that I just have to take because I only gave that number out to a handful of 200 or so close friends. Oh and I mustn't forget to Twitter that last thought...