DGA Convenes Commercial Directing Legends
In "30 Seconds to Impact: Celebrating Game-Changing Commercial Direction," Pytka, Buckley, Giraldi, Gomes and Gartner were queried on the craft by fellow DGA member Jeff Goodby.
Comedy, Celebrities and Antics Mark DGA's
"30 Seconds to Impact" Conversation
By Anthony Vagnoni
George Gomes hasn't shot a TV commercial in almost 20 years, but that didn't stop him from charming the audience at the DGA Theatre in New York on Monday night as the Guild convened a panel of TV commercial legends to help celebrate its 75th Anniversary. In a wide-ranging and often funny panel titled "30 Seconds to Impact: Celebrated Game-Changing Commercial Directing," Gomes held the audience captive while he regaled them with anecdotes about the production of some of advertising's best-loved TV commercial classics.
Gomes was one of five legendary directors who were on the stage; he was joined by Bryan Buckley of Hungry Man, Joe Pytka of PYTKA, Bob Giraldi of Giraldi Productions and Jim Gartner of GARTNER. Moderating the discussion was Jeff Goodby, Co-Chairman and Creative Director of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and himself a DGA member.
The event, part of the Guild's ongoing celebration of its anniversary, kicked off with a montage of classic TV commercials provided to the DGA by SourceEcreative. It included everything from the famous to work for Alka-Seltzer, Chanel, Federal Express, Great American Soups (the legendary Ann Miller song and dance spot directed by Stan Freberg), Levi's, Nike, Diet Coke, Pepsi, Chanel, Budweiser, Got Milk, Honda and Ikea, among others.
The session was introduced by DGA Sixth Vice President Vincent Misiano, who's directed numerous episodes of many hit TV series, and whose opening comment, "commercials are to film what haiku is to poetry," underscored the Guild's view that commercial directors have made their own contributions to not just film techniques and narrative styles, but to the larger pop culture. "Commercials have to stand out in a crowd, one that's often distracted and uninterested," he said. As a result, commercials often demand high creative standards in order to break through.
Citing commercials as a form, and commercial directors as a group, he noted that many of the most exciting techniques in film got their start being used in TV commercials, in areas of composition, color, editorial, pacing, the use of graphics, camera moves and other areas. "In the process, TV commercials have introduced new ways of telling stories," he claimed.
The event was curated by Laura Belsey, a DGA member director and principal in Shadow Pictures, who was credited for providing the drive and vision to make the evening a reality, Misiano added. He acknowledged the contributions not only of SourceEcreative but also the AICP and SHOOT in their support of the panel.
Jeff Goodby, in introducing the group, said, "Directors are magnetic personalities. That's what makes them work. After only being around them for a short time, you find that you want to please them, and they become the focus of your attention." Singling out the unique gifts of the directors on his panel, he pointed out that "commercial directing is an art, not a science, even though there are people who want to make it a science."
The panel got off to a slow start, as Goodby seemed somewhat awed by the collection of directorial talent he found himself with on stage, but things progressively warmed up as the dialogue went on. As usual, Pytka was his blustery and insightful self, commenting at length about how the business has changed, saying it's less fun now that guys like Goodby all work for big corporations. He compared today's holding-company environment to the days when the late Hal Riney, back when his agency was independent, could lavish months on writing a single spot until it was just right, often working not in the office but at a local San Francisco watering hole.
Many subjects were touched on by the directors, from the importance of casting to the use of visual effects in TV spots, but a central focus of the conversation dealt with the use of celebrity talent and the problems it often presented. Giraldi recounted a story from his experience shooting with The Jackson Five for Pepsi back in the 1980s; the Jacksons, upset by the terms of their contract that forced them to appear in the Pepsi ad, refused to remove the sunglasses they were wearing when they showed up for the shoot. After a high-powered huddle between Giraldi and the late BBDO creative chief Phil Dusenberry, it was determined that Giraldi would be the one sent to the trailer to ask the Jacksons to lose the shades. Needless to say, they ignored him.
Gartner, whose work is often warmly emotional, talked about how Hal Riney once hired him to write some ad copy for one of his clients, back when Gartner was an agency copywriter. When Gartner pressed Riney for background info on what the assignment was about, or for info on a strategic brief, Riney resisted, finally agreeing to send him some info on the client but pointing out to him "that all clients want two things: they want to be liked, and they want to be remembered."
There was a lengthy discussion about how directors work with editors and how they deal with the disappointment when they see the final cut of a spot and it's not to their liking. Buckley noted that one way to deal with this is to rely on close relationships with agency creatives. "You tend to work with the same people over and over again, since it increases your chances for success," he noted. Tapping into those relationships to bring up concerns about the cut is one possible way directors can influence the outcome.
But Giraldi pointed out that directors long ago lost control over the final look and pacing of their work. "We're directors of dailies, really," he said. "The agency takes the film and does what they want. And while they can sit with the editor all day and work on the cut, what they can't do is what we do - they can't direct."'
With a nod to changing technology and the ability, as Goodby said, "for anyone to access the tools," they also lamented a shift away from craft to a kind of democracy where everyone can multitask when it comes to production, doing their own edits, their own visual effects, etc.
The high point of the evening was a succession of stories told by George Gomes that captured the freewheeling days of commercial production's past. One had to do with two of his most famous TV spots, both for Alka-Seltzer, the spots that introduced two catch phrases into the American vocabulary: "Try it, you'll like it," and "I can't believe I ate that whole thing."
According to Gomes, the agency at the time, Wells Rich Greene, has created a campaign for the brand that focused on its effect on the pyloric valve, a part of the body that controls how food passes from the stomach to the intestines. After much joking about what this was and whether it mattered to people, Gomes told the audience that Mary Wells, the agency's charismatic leader, was worried that the campaign, created at the client's insistence, was going to be a bust. She asked Gomes and a crew of creatives to basically go shoot something as a backup. The scripts were presented to Gomes as spots "that most likely will never see the light of day." They were shot in an afternoon, cut together and promptly forgotten.
Months later, when the pyloric valve campaign crashed and burned in focus group testing, Wells pulled these two spots out of her back pocket and showed them to the client. The rest, as they say, is history. "It turned out to be some of the best work of my career," Gomes said to warm audience applause.
Published 7 June, 2011
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