On My Radar: Guy Paterson

What’s the best ad campaign you’ve seen recently?

I like the Canal Digital campaign from TBWA (below) that Bart Timmer directed. Unexpected turns and fun missteps with good performances. It can be hard to do fresh-feeling things with this genre but they do it here really well. And that girl in the bank that likes clowns, brilliant.

What website do you use most regularly and why?

It feels like theres always the Guardian open, BBC News, and one rogue Youtube page that keeps playing that I can’t find to mute.

What’s the most recent piece of tech that you’ve bought and why?

I’m not really a tech person, and the closest I’m likely to get excited about is cameras and lenses. So if it qualifies then the last thing I bought is a shoulder rig for a film I’m shooting about banger racing. 

What’s your favoured social media platform?

Instagram, it’s interesting to see how people see. Though sometimes slightly alarming too.

What’s your favourite app on your phone?

I’m actually designing one at the moment that can bend space and time to my will. It’s a bit fiddly but should be ready in 2017. Or 2134. Maybe both.

What’s your favourite TV show and why?

I’m enjoying Westworld so far. And The Young Pope. Not sure which is crazier, but they’re both fun.

What film do you think everyone should have seen and why?

Robert Altman’s M.A.S.H. Everyone should know how to perform basic surgery.

Where were you when inspiration last struck?

Ideas seem to come mostly in-between places more than sitting at a desk. Often you can bang your head against something for hours and it’s only when you get up to get a bandage that it all falls into place. I always have a personal project of some sort on the go and I think that helps sometimes, a problem in one film can be the answer in another.

What’s the most significant change you’ve witnessed in the industry since you started working in it?

When I first started in film, online was not really understood or taken that seriously. And now that it is, we’re no longer tied in to 30 and 60 second spots in the same way. Storytelling has opened up a lot.

If there was one thing you could change about the advertising industry, what would it be?

More scripts would start with the words “We open on the Mongol Plains/surface of the Moon/other places I’d like to film”.

What or who has most influenced your career and why?

Terrence Malick, Wim Wenders and David Cronenberg made the films that made me want to be a film maker, so them I guess. 

Tell us one thing about yourself that most people don’t know.

I have a secret collection of cowboy hats. Though, not so secret now.