Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the husband and wife directing team of last year’s independent success story, “Little Miss Sunshine,” followed up their Academy Award-winning indie film with a Gap commercial.
It may seem an odd choice for the directors to sidestep at the height of their acclaim, but commercial directing is in fact one of the preferred methods for filmmakers to hone their skills.
“We like really to keep active in production, I think it’s sort of like keeping your muscles toned,” Faris said.
Alumni of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television directing program, Dayton and Faris directed the recent commercial that features Claire Danes and Patrick Wilson dance-fighting over the Gap boyfriend trouser. Dayton and Faris have been directing Gap commercials for years, first getting the gig after their work in music videos.
And while the technical aspects of the film and commercial mediums are basically the same, the mentality in telling a story in two hours versus 30 seconds is very different.
“In a feature you learn to actually slow down and you don’t have to have every moment telling you something. In a feature, you can have built-in moments for contemplation,” Dayton said. “(In a commercial,) the time for contemplation is after the commercial is over.”
“The time for contemplation is when you are in the store,” Faris added.
And because the commercials are so short, the directors have to be obsessively attentive to detail.
Attention to detail is vital in other aspects of filming commercials besides directing. Tom DeNove, head of production and vice chair of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television, is also a cinematographer on films, television and commercials. And he too finds that attention to detail is crucial for short commercials.
“If there is a little teeny mistake on a feature film, you don’t see (it). (People are) so engrossed in the story it doesn’t register. But on a 30 second commercial you might see 300 times, the slightest imperfection suddenly becomes huge because people see it over and over and over again.”
Calling commercials a “creative playground,” DeNove also explained that since the commercial market is designed to capture people’s attention and tell a story quickly, experimentation in filming is not only allowed, it is necessary.
“The whole thing about trying to catch people’s attention is you show them something different, something they’re not used to,” DeNove said. “You’re almost forced to try different things, and so it’s very acceptable to do things that haven’t been done before.”
The experimental quality of commercials is helping to change the film school’s attitude toward commercials being an academic directing medium.
“Up until a few years ago, commercials were kind of looked down on by the department. Not as a policy, but if people wanted to do a commercial, it wasn’t something we wanted to promote,” DeNove said. “The last few years we’ve had thesis students do a couple of spec commercials rather than a film.”
But it’s not only the artistic merit of commercials that have directors giving advertising a second look.
Most of the students at UCLA’s film school strive to be feature film directors. But since only so many feature films are distributed each year, the market for filmmakers is cutthroat to break into. When students realize the creative and financial benefits of commercial directing, DeNove says their thinking changes. One student who got out of the “film only” mind-set was Daniel Kaufman, who graduated from the master of fine arts directing program in 1998.
“When I left film school … I took a job as an assistant (to a commercial director). I learned very quickly that it was a great gig,” Kaufman said. “On a feature, if I don’t like the people I’m working with, I’m stuck with them for a year and a half. (On a commercial,) if I don’t like them, three weeks later they are out of my life.”
Kaufman has since directed over 250 commercials and is now getting more chances to work on features ““ something he is looking forward to, because while he has had chances to take risks while working on commercials, he has realized that commercials come with their own conventions.
“There is no time for backstory (so) I work with icons; you look and go, “˜Oh that’s the young dad, that’s the new mom, that’s the difficult teenager,'” Kaufman said.
Dayton and Faris also sometimes find the condensed storytelling in commercials to be stifling. They explained that though they love making commercials, they wouldn’t want it to be their career because at the end of the day, the commercial is not their own.
“People come to us for our opinions, but at the end of the day, it’s the agency and the client that has final control,” Dayton said. “The secret for us is to always work in lower budget films. The more money you spend on a feature, the more it becomes like a giant commercial.”
Dayton and Faris encourage students interested in pursuing film careers to take advantage of their time at UCLA. They encourage students to make films that have a voice and that are completely free from marketing pressures.
“The great thing about being at UCLA is, in a way, it’s the opposite of making commercials. It’s a chance to make anything you want and to do it in kind of an isolated, safe environment,” Dayton said. “In school you are able to explore and not subject yourself to the market. It’s the one chance to do something free of those pressures.”