In the Back-seat with Pulse director Ninian Doff

Pulse Films director Ninian Doff jumped at the chance to work on comedic spot, Back of the Head for UK cinema advertising company Pearl & Dean.

The ad created by Brothers and Sisters features Chad Jackson, a back-of-the-head actor who speaks openly about his greatest roles and proudest moments, including the challenges he has to face.

Doff speaks to shots below about the different stages of producing the campaign - from receiving the script, auditioning and working on similar projects in the future.

What appealed about the script?

Aaron, Will and Josh from Brothers and Sisters came up with the concept of back of the head acting and it made me laugh straight away. I thought it was brilliant and bang on for me and Pulse. From our first discussions on it, I particularly loved how the character wasn’t deluded or bitter - in this parallel universe Back of the Head acting really is a well paid in-demand job and he really is one of the best. That was a really clever and unique take on the character and the joke.

How much of a challenge did you expect communicating the comedy would be and was it the case or did it just flow?

What’s always tough with a comedy piece is you’ve heard or read the jokes a million times before shooting so you have to re-find it again on the day and make it fresh. What always also happens is you come to the edit and bits you thought were the best jokes end up being cut out and a smaller throw-away joke often ends up being your favourite bit of the whole film.

I edited it with Leo King (Stitch) and he took the great approach of cutting it like he had documentary footage rather than a traditional locked narrative script - which was another fun way to keep it fresh and rediscovering new jokes. Ultimately though, the very basic premise of this is funny which is such a gift as you’re already in such a good starting place. 

Tell us about the different scenes… where was the film shot and did the logistics go according to plan?

I really wanted to try and show his whole career and have lots of different films and archive footage. That’s a big part of what hopefully lifts it from being a sketch to being a film in the cinema. So we recreated five different films from his career as authentically as possible. It was probably the funnest shoot I’ve ever had as we to constantly switch genre and play with different styles.

DOP Mátyás Erdély shot this and also got into how schizophrenic the shoot was! We’d shoot a cheesy 80s sports film in the morning then rush to a forest, shoot a dramatic war film, then jump in a car and go and shoot an action film, then move loaction and fake a documentary! We even staged a whole fake nativity play for the sake of a few seconds of archive footage. The whole team were great at making each film look really believable and authentic... and we got to blow things up so it doesn’t get much better than that.

What did you look for in your main protagonist? It’s a pretty unique comedic role…

What was so funny was how quickly a silly joke (the skill of the Back of the Head acting) became reality once we started pre-production. We auditioned everyone with their back to camera as their face was irrelevant and I kept finding myself really seriously saying “oh the back of his head is really funny” or “nah I found his head a bit dull”.

Turns out there really is a skill in back of the head acting! Simon Connolly plays our back of head legend Chad Jackson. He somehow managed to perform the character’s humour and charm via the back of his head. No small feat.

How much do you enjoy shooting comedy? As opposed to your other music-based work.

I love it. I shot a comedy short a while back (“Cool Unicorn Bruv”) which did really well but apart from some funny music videos, this is the first comedy short I’ve done since.

It was really enjoyable to be working with dialogue and characters again. I love developing scripts, working with actors, playing with lines, finding the jokes and the surprises in moments on set. It’s a real love of mine and so hope to make more again soon... I’m working on some scripts at the moment.