Casting. A giant pain in the arse.

Making an effective film is a tricky proposition. There are many points at which you can go fatally and irrevocably astray. But none more dispiriting than getting the casting wrong. you only really find that out in the editing suite. and there’s no CGI in the world that make up for poor casting. They either have it or they don’t.

But casting never gets any easier. And i’m usually casting in LA. where you’d think brilliant talent would be falling out of the palm trees. but it isn’t. there are so many wannabes in LA that it just clogs the system with awfulness. casting among stage actors in New York is far more rewarding. they’ve actually been forced to sell a crowd…live! they’ve been tested.

this is one of my favorite pieces of casting. the actor was wearing a wig btw.

I want to sell this stuff!

Crystal Head Vodka. It’s marketed by Dan Aykroyd, the world’s greatest Canadian. You can see his awesome video here.

Crispin Porter and Bogusky’s new work for KRAFT mac and cheese

here it is. i think it’s brilliant. mac and cheese is primarily about kids but adults love it too. it’s a unifying food, if i may. and this spot is shot so well. the kid’s performance is great. i wanted to punch that mac and cheese stealing dad!

The chimes of midnight are tolling. What will the Boomers do next?

The Baby Boom generation have ripped through the US culture like a freight train. They loved Rock and Roll: meet the Beatles! They wanted to have fun: drugs happen. They wanted to think even more about how awesome they were: EST. They wanted one last fling: Disco happened. They turned into their parents so they elected Dad president: Reagan. They became health conscious: too much jogging and aerobics turned their joints to powder. They wanted money, so the hippies turned into yuppies. Greed good now etc. They started to need a bit of a caffeine boost all of a sudden! Starbucks. The list goes on.

And frankly they are old now. and the fire from the Grim Reaper’s Gatling gun is withering. So what will their last great movement be? DEATH IS THE NEW 40 t-shirts? You know they’ve got one last move in them.

The Nike World Cup TV spot

it cost a fortune. it’s causing a stir. soccer fans will love it. and it stole the thunder from Adidas, who are the official sponsor of the tournament. And it proves yet again that film is the still the best way to get an emotional reaction.

i can remember in the mid 90s when Nike were first entering the soccer market. the conventional wisdom was that soccer was a European sport where tradition was paramount etc So Nike could never be a big player in the category. Well guess what happened?

And then Nike went on to conquer golf, another sport where they never stood a chance for tons of reasons…tradition…genteel game…not brash American.

I’m guessing this cost at least $5 million to produce. And well done the person who got the Simpsons on board. Ronal-doh!

How to choose a film director

Choosing a film director is hard if you haven’t done a lot of it. When you start out you rely on agency producers who know more than you do. But slowly you develop a feel for who’s out there and as you shoot more, how a director can improve your idea.

I look for directors that have a strong flavor. That is, everything they shoot makes you feel something. That is the single most important thing. I might not necessarily like it but if they can make me feel something, i like them.

Shooting film is an art. So look for true artists. There are a lot of bullshitters and chancers pretending to be directors. Artists make you feel something. These guys don’t. They just know how to arrange a shoot. they are film users, not film makers.

Are they nice? Film is a collaborative medium. You have to get on with this person. Shooting is like going camping. You’re all in it together. So you have to get along.

Lastly, try somebody new. I’ve had great luck using directors who had never shot a commercial before i used them. they’re fresh and keen and have tons of energy. just make sure they have strong evidence that they can do it. doesn’t have to be an ad. do they make you FEEL something? You will encounter resistance from senior agency producer types here. I once wanted to use a Sopranos director who had never shot an ad for a very important Budweiser spot, set in… New Jersey! The agency exec producer seriously said to me “we don’t know this guy can tell a story in thirty seconds!”. i knew. HE DIRECTED THE BLOODY SOPRANOS! He was great. Duh!

here is that spot.

WE SELL YOUR STUFF HARDEST!

If we at The Escape Pod had a motto that would be it. What else is there? We’re in the advertising business. We sell stuff. Isn’t that ALL there is? Which is why we don’t have a motto. It should be blindingly obvious. But it isn’t, apparently.

The past ten years have been a bit of a shock to the advertising model. Advertisers and their agencies had understandably gotten very cozy with the crack cocaine of TV advertising. And who could blame us? We had a direct pipeline into your front room. It was perfect!

Then the internet came along and spoiled everything. The attention of the masses splintered. And advertising was thrown for a bit of a loop for a while there. We became preoccupied with things that didn’t REALLY matter. We became obsessed with the Internet. A medium that didn’t rely on us for it’s existence. A medium we couldn’t bend to our will. The bloody cheek!

Along the way the original mission of advertising, to sell stuff, kind of got lost. But that doesn’t change the fact that that’s our raison d’etre. Why we’re here. What our clients hire us to do. It’s the ONLY important bit.

I remember when I was starting out in advertising in New York in the early 1990s. I was truly desperate to get a job. Not just any job, a very specific job working for my advertising hero. A guy who had made his name with work that legendarily sold the shit out of whatever he was advertising real hard.

And I remember having an epiphany one day. All I had to do was create ads that solely sold the product in as naked a fashion as possible and I would immediately differentiate myself from all my fellow ad wannabes who were all trying to show how funny/clever THEY were. It was so simple. I would stand out simply by being the guy who sold the product really hard.

So I devised a test for my ads: if a deaf mute door to door salesman were to hold up this piece of paper to a prospect, would he get invited in? And if the ad didn’t pass that test I wasn’t interested in it.

It worked a treat. My ads got exponentially better and I got hired by my hero.

I never forgot that test. It still works.

Are my ideas selling the product in a brutally hard and honest manner? It’s still the only test that matters.

PS: this post was inspired by this great post by dave trott and this great reaction by vic over at Sell! Sell! Clearly, we should all go out for a pint next time I’m in London.

The Escape Pod seeks a creative intern

We’re really busy and we need someone who desperately wants to kick some ass creatively speaking. If you know someone please comment below. thanks.

Positive PR for the Pod

Yesterday, Chicago Sun-Times advertising and media columnist Lewis Lazare had some nice things to say about our recent work for Whole Foods Market. You can read it here.

ARCHERY??? LOVE IT RIDLEY! (The fragility of ideas)

found THIS great blog post via Irish writer http://twitter.com/juliangough on the twitter. it was written by a Hollywood screenwriter. He points out how the script for the current Ridley Scott version of Robin Hood was MUCH different to what ended up on screen. The original script was called NOTTINGHAM.

He writes “Probably close to 3 years ago, a hot script by Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris called NOTTINGHAM went out to buyers. The script was the Robin Hood story told from the Sheriff of Nottingham’s point of view – as he used period “forensics”, like tracking and arrow trajectory, to find a terrorist who was robbing respectable members of society. Sherlock Holmes in Sherwood Forest.” It’s a great post. You should read it.

Along the way Russell Crowe signed on to star and Ridley Scott was hired to shoot it. And along the way the bad-guy-as-hero idea got dropped in favor of telling the same old story we’ve seen lots of times. It reportedly cost $250 million and recently opened to meh! reviews.

Now i have no idea what happened in detail but i can hazard a pretty good guess. The original idea that got everyone excited (the script) was seen as a just a means to an end. Something shiny to attract star power. Nobody meant to fuck up the script. probably. but they did. and along the way discarded the core of the idea: the sheriff of nottingham is good, robin is a hood.

Now i’ve never shot a movie or got sucked into the Hollywood vortex. But i have written and supervised the production hundreds of commercials and commercial-like things. And in my position i am fortunate. You see as an ad writer, unlike Hollywood, i have the power. Well a lot of the power. the client has ultimate control but they hire me to take care of the creative end of things. and i hire the director etc. and one thing i’ve observed over time is that with any idea there are certain things that are sacrosanct. that if messed with will completely fuck up your idea. there are also lots of things that you can change that aren’t really material. and the trick is knowing the difference between the two.

But in Hollywood writers have no power. Whether they know it or not they are merely generators of meeting fodder. Can you name a famous screenwriter other than Charlie Kaufman?

Clearly nobody stood up to Ridley Scott and said “What the f**k are you thinking Ridley? We are NOT shooting the robin hood story, got that?”. Nobody did the calculus and went “this isn’t going to work Ridley!”. Would you stand up to Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe? Me neither.