The official agency day begins at 9:00 A.M. and ends at 5:30 or 6:00 P.M., but only novices and conscientious receptionists pay much attention to the formal hours of business. The ambitious members of the agency—or rather, those who don’t mind their ambition showing—will be at their desks long before nine, knowing that the early morning is the best time to get some constructive memo writing done before they are sucked into the vortex of briefings, presentations, lunches, and drinks that will take up the rest of the day.
There is, however, one oasis of calm: the creative department is often tranquil and virtually deserted until 9:30 or even later, since copywriters and art directors like to exercise their artistic privilege to ignore such prosaic habits as punctuality. The creative director, now retired, of a large agency once became so irritated at being the only member of his department to start work on time that he lay in wait at the entrance to the agency, alarm clock in hand, to hurl abuse and threats at latecomers. As ten o’clock approached, he was about to return to his office, when a final languid art director sauntered through the door.
“You should have been here an hour ago,” said the creative director.
“Why?” said the artist. “What happened?”
But eventually, with bright or bleary eyes, the entire agency is present and ready to attack the problems (which, as all advertising people know, are only opportunities in disguise) of the day. These are dealt with in a variety of ways that tend to overlap, but they are probably best explained as separate events. And to start with, what better than the corporate ritual dance without which nothing from the purchase of office china to the takeover of a rival agency can proceed: the inescapable, interminable meeting.
The prize for the most trivial meeting is currently held by a team of thirteen agency and television production people who agonized over which brand of mineral water should be available on the set where they were shooting. (Badoit won, but not without some stiff competition from the Perrier supporters.)
Whatever is on the agenda, though, is subject to the same rules and traditions that govern the conduct of all meetings and the deportment of those in attendance.
Venue
Unless the numbers are exceptionally large, or the subject particularly important, meetings are held in the office of the most senior person involved. At the moment when the meeting is scheduled to start, the senior person will usually contrive to be on the phone so that less exalted colleagues can be instructed by the secretary to wait outside or to tiptoe in and perch awkwardly on the glove-leather furniture until the telephone is put down. It is instantly picked up again, and the secretary is buzzed and told to hold all further calls. The senior person, sighing at the magnitude of the cares of high office, will then be ready to preside.
A variation on the telephone technique used to be practiced by the senior vice president of a large New York agency. As his underlings filed in, he would peel off a twenty-dollar bill from a fist-sized roll of bills and use it to polish his already gleaming toe caps before crumpling it up and throwing it into the wastebasket. The effect diminished with repetition, but young and impressionable executives could often be seen in their cubbyholes imitating the great man, the only difference being that memos were used on the toe caps instead of currency.
Equally effective as an unusual start to a meeting, and much closer to nature, was the habit of an agency chairman to be closeted in his personal executive bathroom as the appointed hour arrived. And so one would wait in his office, eye and ear irresistibly drawn to the closed door in the corner, until, with a triumphant flush and a gurgle from the sink, the door would open and the chairman would emerge to address himself to more intellectual matters.
These and other refinements are only possible when meetings are held in a private office, where twenty-dollar bills can be rescued discreetly from the wastebasket and where lavatories are only a few steps from the deck. Other tactics need to be used when the meeting is of sufficient size and gravity to justify the more formal setting of the agency conference room. In this case, the senior person should always be the last to arrive, preferably still in conversation on a cordless phone or with a secretary in tow taking dictation on foot.
Details such as these, while they may be considered bizarre or bad-mannered, are necessary in order to make it clear who is in charge. “Every cock,” as the old proverb reminds us, “is king of his own dunghill.”
Pecking Order and Deportment
Junior people arrive first, if they know what’s good for them, followed in ascending order of seniority by the others. Layouts, computer printouts, and files should be carried loose—never in an attaché case, which arouses suspicions that you were late getting into the office and haven’t had time to extract the relevant documents. As the papers are shuffled and coffee is sipped, the nominal leader of the meeting (as opposed to the true leader, who is the senior person) will make an opening statement about the decision that confronts the assembled gathering. It may be to set a level of advertising expenditure, to assess a new campaign, to ponder the merits of a brilliant but promotion-hungry executive, to interpret a turgid piece of research, or to work out how best to deal with a client who has expressed a willingness to accept free airline tickets. The subject having been put “on the table,” the meeting turns its attention to the most junior member present, who is expected to give an opinion.
A nasty moment indeed, particularly if minutes are being taken that will subsequently be circulated and that might easily be used in evidence at some embarrassing future date. A slip of the tongue here could jeopardize chances of promotion, that new BMW, and upgrading to business-class on business trips. Why in God’s name do they have to put the least experienced person on the spot first?
One might think that it is the proper beginning for a truly democratic decision-making process in which every voice, however small and unimportant, has its say. It is nothing of the sort. The reason for soliciting opinions from the bottom upward is to ensure that the senior person, whose judgment is obviously delivered last, doesn’t make a fool of himself by overlooking an obvious point that could render his wisdom suspect. He, after all, doesn’t have the time to pore over the fine print of every piece of paper that comes across his desk; that is minions’ work. The senior person is there to assess the information presented to him and then to decide on a course of action that will steer the agency ever onward and upward.
So the junior member says his piece and the others try to gauge how it has been received before it’s their turn. If there is an encouraging nod from the senior person, the next in line to speak will elaborate on what has just been said, adding a few flourishes or, to be on the safe side, a couple of minor concerns. This continues up the pecking order until it is clear that a consensus is there for the reaching. The senior person seizes it, adding a flourish or two of his own, and everyone gets back to work. It has been a good meeting.
But, given the assortment of egos and ambitions that exist in any agency, good and constructive meetings do not happen all that often, and it is much more likely that there will be a healthy measure of conflict. Advertising is a matter of opinion rather than a matter of fact, and there is little in the way of indisputable proof that can be used to demolish the misguided ideas of the lunatic who opposes you. This leads, at best, to reasoned argument followed by deadlock; at worst, to reviled insults, sulking, studied inattention to the other point of view, passing notes to a supporter, gusty sighs of boredom, and other, less wholesome signals of disagreement—nail clipping, nose picking, muffled belches, investigation of the inner ear with the end of a pencil, or any minor distraction that can be achieved short of physical violence.
This puts the senior person in a quandary because the meeting is not getting anywhere, and a choice has to be made between democracy and dictatorship. Democracy is tiresome and time-wasting, but at least it keeps most people more or less happy, whereas dictatorship can lead to mutiny in the ranks, resignations, and potential problems with the client. Not surprisingly, democracy usually wins—“we all need to give this a little more thought”—and another date is fixed so that everyone can lock horns again next week. With a little luck, some vigorous lobbying during the intervening days can modify attitudes and prepare the ground for a good meeting—the result, naturally, of mature reassessment. Compromise is never mentioned. Compromise is for wimps.
The Act of Creation
Eventually, some of the decisions made at meetings have to be given form and substance and turned into advertising, and for sheer drama, unconscious comedy, and excitement, nothing can approach the speculative new business pitch.
The agency is given a brief and a deadline by the client (who has decided after some exploratory discussions to give these bright people a chance). A creative team is allocated to the task, a date is set to review their endeavors, and everyone involved waits, with varying degrees of impatience and optimism, for the act of creation to take place. The time allowed for this can be as little as a few days or as much as several weeks, but somehow it is never enough; creative people are instinctive procrastinators, and they consider it unwise to complete work in advance of a deadline, because this might encourage their colleagues to try to change what they’ve done. Experienced executives realize this and will often set a fake deadline. Experienced creative people will assume that it’s fake and disregard it. But that is only one aspect of the complicated and often puzzling process by which a bundle of documents becomes a campaign.
Whatever the product or service being advertised, there are certain standard but unhelpful vague criteria that all good agencies insist upon. (Bad agencies have only one criterion: Give the client what he wants.)
The first requirement is that the advertising should be intrusive. It will be competing for attention with editorial matter, with TV and radio shows, with films, or, in the case of posters, with traffic. If the message isn’t noticed, it’s money down the drain.
There is a school of thought that claims producing noticeable advertising is relatively simple; just get a woman to take her clothes off and feign some sympathy with the product. A carefully structured piece of research will confirm that this does indeed attract attention from both men and women. However, if you’re advertising frozen peas or tennis rackets, the uncontrived and persuasive connection between naked flesh and the product is not immediately obvious. So being noticeable isn’t enough; the advertising should be relevant, as well.
It should also be distinctive within its own category so that it stands out from competing brands and services. It should also be persuasive. It should also be memorable. It should also be on the creative director’s desk by the end of next week. Small wonder that the members of our creative team, electrified by the challenge and opportunity for greatness that confronts them, feel the need for a long and reflective lunch.
In addition to the technical details under discussion—the length of the TV spots, the size of the press ads, the inadequacy of the brief, and the lack of time—there are two more personal considerations to be taken into account. The first is mentioned quite openly, and it is the mutual desire of writer and art director to produce a campaign of such brilliant originality that the entire industry will notice it, talk about it, and bestow upon it the supreme accolade of a major award. (As we shall see later, there are a number of these given out every year, and since they are instrumental in procuring job offers, promotion, salary increases, and a moment of fame, they are deeply loved.)
The second, even more personal hope, is not talked about. Although in theory the creative team should march hand in hand as they proceed toward the great idea, in practice each of them wants to get there first, to be the originating genius: I did it; he helped. This arouses the critical faculties, as far as the other person’s suggestions are concerned, to a degree that can cause days of stalemate and a feeling of tension in the creative team’s office, which any seasoned executive learns to expect. In fact, it adds to the reputation for being difficult that creative people secretly enjoy. Artists are always difficult.
The lunch finished and the bill carefully preserved for expenses, writer and art director return to their desks for a session of mental pencil sharpening. Magazines and old copies of the Art Director’s Annual are leafed through. There are long periods of silence and gazing out of the window. An odd line is tapped out on the typewriter; a desultory scribble is made on the layout pad. To an observer, the scene has all the creative drama of two people waiting for a bus.
Every so often, the executive in charge of the account will poke his hopeful head in the door to see whether his team has been visited by the muse.
“How’s it going?”
The writer and art director look up from their reference book—Masterpieces of Erotic Photography, The Hundred Greatest Advertisements Ever Written—and glare at the intruder. What does he think this is, a factory? Just press a button and get a campaign? Doesn’t he realize that he is interrupting a most complex and delicate chain of deliberations that will ultimately lead to the great idea? How can the act of creation take place with idiots like him trampling in and out and disturbing these highly tuned brain cells? Fuck off.
The executive withdraws and the team resumes its pondering. At last, one of them puts forward a line or a visual idea. “What about if we…”
Almost before the words are spoken, they’re rejected. If no other reason comes quickly to mind, there is always the old dismissive standby: It’s been done before. In fact, plagiarism and the use of images and personalities that are already established in the public consciousness have often worked very well in advertising campaigns, but not this time—or at least not yet. There are still a few days to go before the deadline, before the serious panic sets in. Let’s see if we can find something really different. (Which, translated, means: Let’s see if I can find something really different and much better than that terrible idea of yours.) The window gazing and pencil sharpening continue.
As the days pass, the visits from the executive become more frequent and exchanges become more heated. Still nothing emerges from the temple of creativity. It is time for the trump card, which the executive delivers with some relish: The client has called the chairman of the agency and insisted on a meeting to see the new campaign, and of course the chairman has assured him that it will be ready. More than that; it will be a gem of a campaign, loved by the sales force, adored by the public, envied by the competition.
But where is it? The creative team’s office is like a submarine under attack from depth charges. Every five minutes, it seems, people are coming in to nag about their own particular deadlines: The production manager needs the roughs so that he can put in hand the typesetting and finished artwork that will transform scruffy bits of paper into advertisements of presentation standard; the TV producer needs the storyboards so that the commercials can be costed and maybe rough commercials made; the executive needs to see the idea so that he can tailor the marketing evidence to support it; the planners, the researchers, and the media buyers all come and go, cursing about the impossible lack of time. The creative director, who often has the job of presenting the campaign, takes up semi-permanent residence in the office, and even the chairman, conscious of his promises to the client, may hover briefly before going to lunch.
It is all very gratifying to our heroes. Now that they have succeeded in bringing most of the agency to a state of desperate expectation, they can get down to work. Social engagements are abandoned. Husbands, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, and the bartender at “21” are made aware of the inhuman pressure being applied. Weekends are ignored. The lights burn late. It’s a brutal business, this quest for inspiration.
But when it comes, as it inevitably does in one form or another, what a satisfying change in relationships takes place. Instead of being hounded for work by every busybody in the agency, it is now the turn of the writer and art director to do the hounding. Of course roughs can be finished, commercials estimated, media and marketing plans revised, and slides and charts prepared in the space of forty-eight hours. These are mechanical tasks, nothing compared to the sweat and genius that have gone into the act of creation. Relaxed and triumphant, the writer and art director head for the local watering hole for a quiet celebration while their colleagues work on into the night.
There is barely time for a rehearsal before the day of presentation, and this is not always as useful as it might be because many of the props are still being prepared. Never mind. The presentation team is now united and optimistic. Anyone but a complete knucklehead can see that this is one of those rare campaigns that will run and run, making handsome profits for the agency and expensive reputations for its creators. The stage manager, usually the account director, goes through the order of events and checks the cues that will activate the lighting and the battery of audiovisual equipment concealed behind and around the conference room. Tomorrow is the big day, and it is awaited with nervous confidence.
It begins early, and with more panic. Despite working through the night at triple overtime, one of the studios has not quite finished putting the final gloss on some material that is absolutely vital to the presentation. Cabs and messengers crisscross the city while the account director tries to devise some plausible distraction that will delay the proceedings without making the agency look like a bunch of last-minute amateurs. Maybe the chairman could engage the senior client in some man-to-man talk about the broad canvas of industry, but what the hell are we going to do with the rest of them?
Meanwhile, the receptionist has had her copy of Cosmopolitan confiscated and has been reminded for the eighteenth time of the client’s name. All secretaries who are likely to be visible as the visiting entourage makes its way to the conference room are given something, anything, to type so that the agency will exude an atmosphere of diligent efficiency. The reception area is double-checked for dirty ashtrays and dog-eared pornographic magazines that have been left behind by printers’ reps and space salesmen. And then, not a minute too soon, the creaking, leather-clad hulk of a messenger shambles in with the missing material.
Right! We’re ready for them. The agency welcoming committee can now assume the confident air of people who have never known a moment’s anxiety in their lives, and the account director abandons his emergency plan for delaying the start of the presentation. The damn client will probably be late anyway.
But, punctual to the second, the elevator doors open and a covey of young businesspeople in dark suits, led by the senior client and bristling with attaché cases, makes its purposeful way into the reception area.
There is a hasty adding up of numbers by the account director, because it is a part of presentation politesse that every member of the client’s party should have an agency counterpart. Normally, the attendance figures are advised in advance, but sometimes the client will bring along a surprise guest, and the agency is obliged to find an extra body. It would never do to be caught short of one young man in a dark suit.
The seating arrangements in the conference room have been worked out with an eye for protocol that would do credit to a diplomatic banquet. The senior people from both sides are within murmuring distance of one another, and the lower ranks are paired off in less important seats. The account director opens the meeting with a few brief remarks—delighted to have the opportunity, rare to have such a thorough and helpful brief, please feel free to ask questions as we go along—and then hands it over to the agency demolition squad.
Their job is to dissect the advertising of the competition—to point out its flaws, its shaky positioning, the opportunities it has missed, the gaps it has left, the insights it has failed to perceive, the errors of execution. This is done in a detached, logical, almost scientific fashion. Vulgar jeering is carefully avoided. The tone is restrained and academic and, if it is done by experts, very effective.
Its purpose, of course, is to set the client off down the path to the inescapable conclusion that all will be revealed later on. As in other meetings, signs of encouragement are hoped for, but the senior client is professionally impassive, and the entourage is careful to follow his example. For the agency people who are on their feet trying to coax a glimmer of sympathetic response from the audience, it is like preaching to zombies. But they plow on with their slides and charts and statistical analyses and meticulously supported assumptions until the background has been well and truly filled in and the moment of truth arrives: The campaign, in all its ingenious manifestations, is about to be exposed.
Academic observations now give way to something akin to cabaret. The agency’s best presenter, redolent with charm, produces one great ad after another as though he were pulling rabbits out of a hat. Jingles are played through the conference room’s sound system at a volume just bearable to the human ear. TV commercials, rough but promising, appear on the screen. Evidence of creative effort comes bursting out of the walls, and all that is missing is someone jumping out of a giant cake. (Although even this, if the client is a cake manufacturer, can’t be ruled out.)
At the end, as the conference room’s lights come up and the best presenter sits down, the agency people look expectantly at the client people, modest smiles of achievement on their faces, not expecting applause, perhaps, but eager for some token of appreciation.
The senior client, however, is not to be rushed. There is no chance that he will flout years of tradition by expressing his own opinion before he has put his young colleagues through their paces, and the most junior of these is told to share his thoughts with the attentive group around the table. Notes are consulted. A throat is cleared. The young man is not quite sure whether to address his remarks to his boss or to the agency chairman, and even less sure of what those remarks ought to be. In the chasm between unqualified enthusiasm and outright rejection lies the prudent course to take, but there should be some hint somewhere of a point of view, otherwise he’s going to look like a dunce, incapable of constructive thought and therefore not senior-executive material.
He starts safely enough: “The agency’s approach is very interesting, and they have clearly devoted a lot of time and effort in coming to their conclusions.”
So far, so good. Now for the tricky part, with everyone hanging on his words—the agency, to see whether he will be a useful ally or a difficult little creep; his colleagues, to see if this first straw in the wind seems to be blowing in an acceptable direction; his boss, sitting inscrutably at the top of the table—they are all waiting, watching, pencils poised over notepads. Oh, God.
He takes a flying leap toward the middle of the road. “On the one hand, the agency’s ideas are undoubtedly… well, interesting.” (Fresh and different can also be used here without too much risk.) “And there are some aspects of the campaign that would probably work very well, although obviously they’re still rough and would need to be discussed in detail and researched and fine-tuned.” (An invaluably vague word, fine-tuned.) “On the other hand, there is a possibility—only a possibility—that certain requirements set out in the brief have been, if not exactly neglected, not given sufficient emphasis.”
Before he can be pinned to the wall by the agency and asked precisely what he means, he sprints toward a summing-up. “The one hand” and “the other hand” having been used, “in general” is now the only phrase that has the necessary air of finality without having sufficient weight to cause the speaker to lose his balance and fall off the fence. “In general, therefore, the agency has come up with some very interesting proposals, and it would be very… well… interesting to see how they plan to develop them.”
More of this goes on, sometimes hours of it, until the senior client is ready to unburden himself. By this time, the agency people are leaning forward like young cuckoos waiting for a worm. Surely now there will be a decisive and favorable response, followed by champagne in the chairman’s office, banner headlines in the trade press, and another few million to add to the agency’s billings. The anticipation is excruciating.
The senior client chooses his words as if he were selecting a cigar; he hasn’t gotten where he is by blurting out his opinion without first making a few suitably statesmanlike remarks. And so he thanks the agency for its efforts, perhaps with a wry reference to midnight oil, before picking his way through the comments that have been made in the course of the presentation. The agency fidgets. Is he going to buy it? Did we get the worm? For heaven’s sake, man, get on with it.
And he does, bur very rarely in the definitive way that the agency is hoping for.
“All I am prepared to say at the moment is that you have given us a great deal—a great deal—to think about.” He looks at the agency chairman and smiles a tycoon-to-tycoon smile. “I’m sure you weren’t expecting an instant decision when there are so many considerations to take into account.”
An instant decision is exactly what the agency chairman, an optimist to his toenails, was expecting, but he does his best to be a tycoon about it, nodding sagely as he tries to avoid thinking about the enormous amount of money that has just been spent to achieve an anticlimax.
Souvenirs are distributed—inch-thick marketing documents stuffed with statistics and conclusions, decorated with miniature reproductions of advertisements and storyboards and “personalized” with potted biographies of the agency personnel who would work on the account. Once the client party has been escorted out of the agency, the presentation team returns to the conference room for the postmortem. The clients and their reactions are discussed and analyzed, and the odd recrimination is voiced about somebody’s lackluster presentation performance, but it’s all inconclusive and often rather depressing. There’s nothing to be done now except wait for the client’s verdict, and the bastard didn’t even give a hint about when that might be.
Normal service in the agency is resumed, and those tasks, great and small, that were neglected or postponed during the panic are picked up again in a rash of meetings.
The writer and art director who worked on the presentation are feeling an even greater sense of deflation than the rest of the agency. They sweated blood. They produced a masterpiece of persuasive communication, and what happened? It wasn’t sold properly. Another black mark on the record of their executive colleagues, more ammunition in the cold war between the princes of creativity and the rest of the world. Fortunately, they can now divert themselves with a job that has been dragging on for many months and that is at last ready for execution: their epic commercial.
The average cost of a thirty-second commercial, without anything too complicated in the way of special optical effects, is at least $250,000. If a celebrity is used, there is a considerable fee on top of that, plus handsome repeat fees every time the commercial is shown. Prime-time television costs approximately $100,000 a minute. With an investment of this size, it is not hard to see why the progress of most commercials, from original concept to finished film, is slow and often extremely frustrating.
It was months ago that the writer and art director labored and brought forth their idea, drawn up on a storyboard. The creative director approved it, the account people accepted it, and it was gradually sold up through the levels of client management. It was generally agreed that the commercial was on strategy, but the client had some misgivings about the details of execution, and so it was put into research.
The original storyboard was drawn up again, in more finished form. A soundtrack of commentary and music was recorded and the elements were put together to make a film—still rough but sufficiently clear for a representative selection of the target audience (possibly those long-suffering housewives from Queens) to understand and comment on it. A screening was arranged, and the housewives were invited to see the preview of a new television show. During the screening, they were also treated to a sight of the new commercial, and among the questions they were asked afterward were questions about the commercial.
At this point, complications set in, because research people are not satisfied with simple answers. It is not enough to know that Mrs. Jones liked the commercial. How much did she like it, on a scale of one to ten? What did she remember? Was there anything in the commercial she disliked? Would she be: (a) very interested in trying the product? (b) quite interested in trying the product? (c) not interested in trying the product? Reams of completed questionnaires are then studied and analyzed. The results, which are always open to considerable interpretation, are worried over and inspected from different angles by the agency and the client. Weeks pass, but eventually qualified approval is given and the show can go on.
Meanwhile, the writer, the art director, and the agency producer have been hard at lunch, deciding various artistic matters, and at the top of their list is the choice of director.
At the end of 1989, there were 464 directors of TV commercials in London chasing barely three thousand commercials and revised versions. Competition as keen as this breeds specialists, and so there are directors who specialize in dialogue, in fashion, in action, in special effects, in hair, in drinks, in any one of a dozen subdivisions of technique. But for our agency trio, putting together their epic, these worthy craftsmen are not quite what they had in mind, not heavyweight enough. They are united in their desire to get a features director who is resting between engagements.
It comes as a surprise to many people to discover that internationally known film directors are often more than happy to descend from their artistic eminence to shoot a commercial. What is it that lures them away from Gene Hackman in Hollywood to an unknown character actor in New York? How can a commercial for a soft drink compare with the creative scope offered by a tale of love and violence on the big screen?
The reason, in one form or another, is money—not just the director’s fee (although that has been known to reach $30,000 a day) but the luxury of time and the size of the production budgets, which, in relative terms, are infinitely more generous than those allocated to feature films.
Instead of breaking his neck to get five or ten minutes of usable film in the can every day, all the director has to worry about is thirty or forty seconds. And the money available for production values—the props and all those barely glimpsed but wonderful touches that make set designers twitch in ecstasy—is there by the bucketful: four thousand dollars a second. This gives a director the chance to make a small but perfect thing, a marvelously polished tiny film that will not only keep his hand in but will also go some way toward helping with the alimony payments.
The agency producer makes his calls to Los Angeles to see who might be free to consider the commercial. Scripts are sent out and timetables are juggled. The first of many budget battles takes place when the true cost of the director’s involvement is calculated—his airfares, his board and lodging, his five-figure daily rate, and his well-known habit of shooting into the night on overtime—but these are small concerns when compared with the awards that will mark this as one of the legendary, never-to-be-forgotten commercials.
Once the director has been recruited, daily contact with the agency producer is maintained by the director’s producer, who will be in charge of organizing the set, the crew, the equipment, the money, the catering, and a hundred other details that have to be seen to. In addition, and most important of all, the director must be kept happy. He is the star, and he must not be bothered by trifles. In other words, the producer is responsible for everything except the success of the commercial, credit for which is shared between the director and the agency people.
As one might expect, the road to the shoot is paved with meetings. There are preproduction meetings, casting sessions, auditions, lunches, drinks, budget adjustments—sometimes with the client, as often as possible without him. The director’s presence is used sparingly, because we don’t want him to be upset by a twit of a brand manager who keeps insisting on a ten-second product shot in the middle of the commercial. That little problem is swept under the carpet, to be argued about when the rough cut is ready.
On the day of the shoot, a small army converges on the studio’s soundstage. The agency people, after an unsuccessful struggle, have been obliged to bring the client. There might easily be a crew of twenty or more, for sound, lighting, camera operating, focus pulling, makeup, hairdressing, catering, each with jealously guarded areas of expertise. Woe betide the helpful continuity person who happens to be standing by a light that the camera operator wants moved three inches to the left. If she attempts to move it, the electricians will be up in arms.
There will be the artistes, studying the script next to the sound crew, who are studying page three of the Daily News. There will be the producer and a personal assistant. And there will be that lordly figure dressed in crumpled but expensive clothing, the director.
Now that everyone has arrived, the first coffee break of the day can be taken. Doughnuts and croissants are distributed, and the crew stands around chatting about last week’s job, when, due to the director’s upset stomach, they ran into considerable and lucrative overtime, which they refer to affectionately as the diarrhea bonus.
For the client, who has never attended the shooting of a commercial before, it is disappointingly matter-of-fact. This is, after all, a film. Where is the drama, the electric atmosphere before a great performance, the glamour?
Little does he know, at 8:30 in the morning, that his most enduring memory of the day will be one of boredom, often accompanied by heartburn caused by bad coffee and too many sugary treats. His hours on the set will be hours of immense tedium and discomfort. He will not be allowed to speak or move while the camera is turning. He will hold himself unnaturally still, fighting off cramps, and peer toward the center of activity in the hope of seeing something exciting, because here he is on the fringes of show business. Those are real actors. That is a real director. Something exciting must happen.
And what does he see? The same short sequence repeated ten, fifteen, twenty times. Dialogue that was amusing at ten o’clock is irritating by eleven and actively offensive by noon. And it all sounds identical, anyway. Why go through it again?
Because, unknown to a novice like him who doesn’t know a whip pan from a lap dissolve, there is always some slight imperfection, perceptible only to the director’s merciless eye and hypercritical ear.
TAKE ONE: The actor delivers his lines superbly, but someone in the darkest corner of the set shuffled his feet and the sound engineer has picked up the shuffle on the tape.
TAKE TWO: The actor delivers his lines superbly, but the makeup artist notices a drop of perspiration on the side of his nose.
TAKE THREE: The nose stays dry, but the actor doesn’t quite repeat his previous superb delivery.
And so it goes on. And on. And on. There are frequent pauses for refreshment after the first coffee break—the early lunch break, the disturbed lunch break, the afternoon break, the preovertime break—and it is possible to eat rather badly five or six times in the course of the day. It is the proud boast of the film technicians’ union that it has never in its history lost a member though lack of nourishment.
The shooting day starts at about eight and ends when the director is satisfied, which may unusually be as early as five or as late as the budget can stand the overtime. At the end of it, there will be an hour or so of film from which to choose the magic thirty seconds. The rough cut will be the subject of further meetings and more editing. The brand manager will want his ten-second product shot. The agency and the production company will resist. And the director will be on the plane back to Los Angeles, having made sure that his preferred cut of the commercial, which may or may not bear any resemblance to the final film, is put on his personal show reel.
It has been a taxing experience for all concerned, but as everyone in advertising agrees, it’s a tough business. People outside it have no idea what we have to go through. Have another drink.