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Edgar Wright and Chaka Sobhani in conversation
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For the headline session of our shots Out of the Box event, the Moxie Pictures director (and everyone's favoutite Cornetto smuggler) joins Leo Burnett's Global CCO to discuss his wide-ranging career, and how short-form can have a major influence on long-form.
What do you get if you cross a multi-award-winning TV and film producer, director and screenwriter with a CCO who's worked for the biggest broadcasters, brands and agencies worldwide?
To be honest, we don't know, but what we DO know is that it's going to be one heck of a final session for the upcoming shots Out of the Box event, our day conference held at The Londoner in Leicester Square, featuring insight, inspiration and debate, and cover topics from across the advertising industry and beyond.
Needing no real introduction is Moxie Pictures director Edgar Wright; one of the major creative voices in British comedy and entertainment whose career has spanned from the cult sitcom Spaced to the era-defining Cornetto Trilogy, alongside music videos for Beck and Mint Royale and ads with SquareSpace, Nike, and McDonald’s. Interviewing Edgar will be Leo Burnett's Global CCO Chaka Sobhani, a creative who is no stranger to television, having started as a film-maker before being tasked with setting up ITV Creative, the UK channel's first in-house creative agency, production company and design studio.
Expect a session full of creative insights and production titbits from two of the UK's most original minds.
Above: Edgar Wright and Chaka Sobhani.
Other sessions that have been announced include a panel discussion featuring heads of production from four of the UK's most creative agencies; TBWA's Melody Sylvester, Uncommon's Charlie Gatsky Sinclair, Creature's Kristie Girvan and Maxine Hose of Grey. Chaired by director and former agency producer Ed Sayers, the panel will discuss, among other things, post-Covid working practices, how new technology is impacting the business, and the state of production, both here and abroad.
In their presentation, Does not compute: Staying human in an AI world, Private Island's Chris Boyle and Helen Power will examine how artificial intelligence can be used to empower how we tell stories. They will take Pixar's mantra, 'the art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art', to unpick what AI means to us today and how we can best use it.
Above [Left-right]: Charlie Gatsky Sinclair, Kristie Girvan, Maxine Hose, Melody Sylvester, shots Culture Editor Amy Kean and AI supremos Private Island (aka Chris Boyle and Helen Power)
We also have Amy Kean, shots's own Culture Editor, and the CEO and Creative Director of Good Shout, giving a presentation titled Weirdness and the magic of bad ideas. With formulas, data and optimisation ruining the creative industries, Kean believes we are facing a 'normality crisis' in which everyone's starting to talk, act and sound the same, in order to gain mass approval. But, she will be asking, where's the weirdness? Where are the renegade voices, driven by being different?
The session will talk about the science of weirdness and why creatives need to get more comfortable with being disliked, especially in the era of social media. From a culture perspective, she will also discuss why bad ideas are actually the best ideas you can have.
