Brazil: Jones+Tino; The Boys From Brazil
Consensus sucks & arguing rocks, opine directing duo Jones+Tino.
Consensus sucks and arguing rocks, opine directing duo Jones+Tino, while agreeing with each other about the creative process. But they have mustered enough creative harmony to produce outstanding work in their particular Brazilian style
Trying to pin down Jones+Tino is like trying to nail jelly to the wall. While shots was in Brazil they were in Paris meeting their new European/US reps Iconoclast before skipping up to Amsterdam, and now they’re back at home in São Paulo I’ve just managed to catch them on the phone before they fly to Chicago, and then take a trip to Montreal.
But that’s to be expected when you’re chasing a hot new directing partnership from a booming advertising market, whose reel is already bursting at the seams with artistic spots for big clients and revered agencies. It’s exactly the life they want, explains Tino (real name – Airton Carmignani): “We’re trying to balance working locally and abroad. Brazil is really hot at the moment but we can bring some expertise from the international market to Brazil and some Brazilian expertise to the international market.”
Tino first met and collaborated with Ricardo Jones eight years ago when they were art director and copywriter respectively at F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi in São Paulo. As creatives they always enjoyed getting involved with the director from the start of a project, participating in pre production and making mood films with stock footage. They finally made the leap to directing in 2008 with one of their own projects – an anti-smoking film titled War for health insurance provider Unimed Healthcare. Using stop motion and 13,600 cigarettes, it illustrated how smoking causes a higher death toll than armed conflict.
Don’t ape the Argentines
War was soon followed by their first live-action spot, The World’s Hardest Job, starring Brazilian footballer Luis Fabiano for Nike. Was it scary working for such a big client so early in their directorial careers? “Not really because we’d worked with them before as creatives and they trust us. Our knowledge of the market and the client really helped us to get more confident and helped them to trust us more,” says Tino. “And it was a really low budget project so they didn’t have much choice!” jokes Jones.
That spot was a big milestone in the development of the duo’s unique style, which is largely influenced by the print advertising they loved creating at F/Nazca, but they feel has become too “hard selling” in the national industry as a whole. They cite diverse sources of inspiration from European, US and Japanese filmmaking, to impressionism and fine artists like Edward Hopper. “We try to start from a powerful image and build the narrative from this point,” explains Jones, and they’re keen to make sure their style has an international feel: “When we were creatives we got the feeling that Brazilian directing didn’t have a real style because Argentinian advertising was getting stronger and stronger, year after year, and we thought many directors in Brazil were trying to copy the Argentinian style to look cooler. We thought that we should have our own style,” says Tino. It’s a style that’s developing nicely and since their first Nike spot they’ve directed two more for the same client, as well as a clever commercial, Le Curiosism, for the Pinacoteca Art Museum of São Paulo, based around humans’ innate cat-like curiosity.
Despite Argentina’s superior reputation for directing talent in recent times, the duo aren’t impressed by Brazil’s industry protection laws that will soon be coming into force. “It’s stupid because it makes the internal market comfortable and decreases the competition. You won’t need to get better and better to compete with people who are doing better work than you,” says Tino, passionately. “But now a lot of production companies from Argentina are opening offices here and this is good because it’ll bring lots of talent to the market,” he adds, relishing the prospect of being kept on his toes.
Even though they’re now fully-fledged directors (currently repped by Delicatessen Filmes for the Brazilian market), Jones+Tino don’t want to hang up their creative hats. In fact, it sounds like they have them tattooed on their heads. “Whenever we see copy we try to add ideas, it’s impossible not to react. We really like to collaborate with the creatives,” says Jones. “That’s one thing we don’t want to lose – this creative eye for the film because the most important thing for advertising when you see the script is the idea.” And like most partnerships, this can cause ‘debates’ along the way, confesses Tino: “All the spots we did – they are all done with a lot of fighting from the start of the process to the editing room,” and Jones points out that such friction actually produces better results: “We did some films as creatives when everyone in the room was really comfortable with everything and the final result sucked!”
It could be fun
Ultimately, it’s getting people’s attention that Jones+Tino are most interested in. “Nowadays no one has to watch commercials anymore. Our job is to make people want to watch so they go to YouTube and say, ‘I saw something really different and I want to see it again’,” says Tino, and they believe that can be achieved through formats other than 30 or 60-second TV commercials. “It’s not about only TV anymore. We believe that advertising can be more than just a sponsored film. It can be something that connects to people and makes them want to watch again. We don’t think it’s art, but we think it could be fun.”
They also think that next year will bring a new wave of opportunities for working in different formats thanks to another protection law being introduced that will force international channels to air a certain amount of local content during prime time. Hefty funds from the government will be up for grabs to develop short and feature films. “The thing about advertising is you can make more money but you can’t be attached to it because you lose the freshness of your work,” says Tino, though they’re not too bothered what the medium is, as long as they can be inventive. “We like advertising but we’re really open to developing in other formats too. We love to tell a good story, to create something.” With two guys so open to trying new things, you can bet that in 2012 it’ll be even harder to pin Jones+Tino down.
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