Production: The young gun directors

Isherwood and his peers on Saatchis' worldwide creative board have spent
the past few months scouring the network for the hottest new directing
talent they can find. The best were put on a reel and will be shown to
an audience of thousands at the Grand Palais in Cannes today (22
June).

Of course, not all of you are lucky enough to be strutting your stuff on
La Croisette this afternoon, so a select few of Saatchis' young guns
feature on these pages. So what makes this year's crop - the 16th
Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors' Showcase - so special?

For Isherwood, it is the variety. Among the latest crop of films is a
moving allegory involving a sleep-deprived badger and a race between two
German airline pilots. "It might not be the best reel we've seen, but
the talent pool is the strongest, and broadest, yet. Our directors have
come from very unexpected walks of life," he says.

A mathematician, an architect, a linguist and a qualified barrister find
themselves on Saatchis' reel this year. "They are discovering or living
out their dreams," Isherwood says. "Look at Jamie Rafn. He went to
Oxford, studied law, took his exams, qualified, and then chucked it all
in to start making films."

"It takes balls, doesn't it?" he adds. "Film-making is so haphazard.
There is no structure to it. You either make it or you don't, and you
have to live with the knocks. You need thick skin as well as bundles of
talent and a good eye for a story."

And yet making films, ads in particular, is increasingly exclusive.
"There aren't many interesting scripts around for new talent because the
established directors are hogging them by lowering their prices,"
Isherwood complains.

This is not helped by problems on the agency side, Stephen Gash, the
producer at QI Commercials, argues. "Advertising agencies are being
squeezed from all ends and there are not many agencies big enough or
bold enough to put their shrinking production budget in the hands of an
unknown quantity."

This, Isherwood says, has led to new directors finding other outlets:
pop promos or short films they are writing themselves. And websites such
as YouTube and Google Video, which allow anyone anywhere to upload
three-minute videos, give directors another way to find an audience.
"Perhaps we should look at pulling talent from the web next year," he
muses.

But more outlets do not necessarily mean more opportunities. There are
1,500 listed commercials directors in the UK. But, Steve Davies, the
chief executive of the Advertising Producers Association, says, the vast
majority do not have regular work. And of those who do, only a handful
are front of mind in agency TV departments.

So how can new directors get a foot in the door? One way is to
specialise. Stephen Mead was a director at Academy who made a name for
himself directing hair and beauty commercials. In September last year,
he launched his own production company, Short Films, with the producer
Holly Hartley, and has a reel that reads like a who's who of beauty
brands (Max Factor, Wella, Pantene, Clairol and a certain L'Oreal
commercial starring the former footballer David Ginola).

"I started out doing different kinds of work, but I found that unless
you were best in a certain field, you would not get the best jobs, so I
consciously chose to do the beauty thing," Mead says. "Yes, beauty
scripts can be mind-numbingly basic and lack a genuine idea, but there
is a skill to doing them well. We try to give them a sense of person,
place and reality."

It is rare, however, for production companies to specialise. This, Gash
says, is because "there's a temptation for production companies to look
at the market as a dartboard. They will think 'we've got a director
who's good at shooting cars, but we need someone who can do comedy'. So
you wind up with a roster that is a photo-fit of the advertising
categories."

The reality, of course, is that the best directors can turn any script
into a decent ad, which is why the same names crop up time and time
again at awards ceremonies. "The top two directors in the UK at the
moment are Frank Budgen and Danny Kleinman," Richard Myers, Saatchi &
Saatchi's creative director (ideas, company, culture) and a member of
the worldwide creative board, says. "Both will always find a way to
shoot something and make it outstanding, whatever the script - and they
must have tackled some turkeys in their time."

"The great directors are naturally curious, slightly obsessive and
constantly looking for a different approach to their art," Myers
concludes.

JAMIE RAFN - UK

She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not (below) is a short film about the swings
and roundabouts of a relationship between two young lovers. With its
witty story-telling and canny observations, it doesn't look like the
work of a rookie with no formal training, Isherwood observes. Born in
Spain to British and Danish parents, Rafn spent his early years
travelling the world with his family. He completed his education at
Oxford, where he graduated with a Law degree and then qualified as a
barrister. But he decided law wasn't for him and set out to fulfil his
life-long ambition and become a film-maker.

Production company: HLA (London)

NAGI NODA - JAPAN

Noda's name may already be familiar. So might the fairytale feel of her
video "sentimental journey" for the Japanese pop queen Yuki. Noda
directed Mother's "what goes around" spot for Coke (above), and
"sentimental journey" was its inspiration. It is the story of a girl's
emotional life. Each change in emotion is played by one of 100 or so
body doubles frozen into a slightly different position from the one in
front. The film is made from a single shot. "We talk about sound
enhancing images. This is definitely a case of a song made more
attractive by the visuals," Myers says. "It's 'cog'-esque in its
attention to detail. Clever Mother for spotting it."

Production company: Partizan (London)

DAGEN MERRILL - US

Merrill made an early start in film-making - his first job was working
pyrotechnics in the jungles of Western Samoa, aged 13. Still only 27, he
is now regarded as one of the hottest young directors the other side of
the Atlantic. Already an Honorary Fellow of the American Film Institute,
Merrill broke into the limelight with the short film Accomplice (left).
This is a story that hints at the events leading up to the assassination
of JFK, which was a finalist in the Sundance Project Greenlight
competition for young directors. The film was pieced together using
completely nonsensical dialogue written by Matt Damon and Ben
Affleck.

Production company: Accomplice (LA)

MIKE LONG - US

Beatbox Family (above) is, surprisingly, Long's first outing behind the
camera. But with ten years' experience as an art director under his
belt, he knows a thing or two about making an ad. After graduating in
Graphic Design, Fine Art and Photography at the Ringling School of Art
and Design in Florida, Long spent the next decade in agencies all over
the world, from New York and Chicago to Warsaw and London (including,
coincidentally, a spell at Saatchi & Saatchi). His debut is an
interesting spot for MTV. A young man arrives at his new girlfriend's
house to discover the entire family, the pet polecat included,
communicate using various scratching noises typical of a human beatbox.
"A sterling first effort," Myers says.

Production company: Epoch Films (NY)

CHRIS CAIRNS - UK

Manchester born and raised, Cairns excelled at school and got into
Oxford to read Languages. But he pretty soon realised being a linguist
wasn't for him, so he left to do an art foundation course at Salford
University. After building an appetite for film-making in his final
year, he became a runner in Soho. In his spare time, he made animation
and music videos, particularly for his housemate, the soon-to-be rock
star Tom Vek. A Tom Vek video led to him being snapped up by Partizan in
2004. "Eclectic breaks" (left) is one of his latest works - an ad for a
music-mixing brand in which a DJ uses two roundabouts as decks.

Production company: Partizan (London)

SI&AD - UK

Simon Atkinson and Adam Townley are the directing duo Si&Ad. They are an
unusual pairing: Atkinson went to art school to study Graphic Design,
Townley graduated with a degree in Maths. They met at Virgin Records in
1998 and together created websites for The Rolling Stones, The Chemical
Brothers and Massive Attack, winning awards along the way. In 2001, they
started shooting music videos before joining Academy a year later. But
it was Sweet Dream (above), a short story of a young boy's day, which
caught Saatchis' attention. "Of those we've selected, Si&Ad are probably
the most natural contenders to make it in commercials," Isherwood
says.

Production company: Academy (London)

SHAUN GLADWELL - AUSTRALIA

Gladwell's approach to directing is not the gung-ho action extravaganza
one might expect from a keen skateboarder from Sydney. His videos - one
featuring a man spinning on his head, called Pata Physical Man (left),
another showing people rising and falling as if on an invisible
trampoline, called God Speed Verticals - are designed to run as
hour-long installations at exhibitions. "There is a grace and visual
poetry in the way Shaun treats the urban sports genre; the antithesis of
the epilepsy-inducing fast cutting we're used to on MTV," Myers says.
Gladwell graduated from London's Goldsmith's College in 2001.

Production company: Revolver (NSW)

ALEX KIESL & STEFFEN HACKER - GERMANY

The directing duo run the visual effects department at Unexpected, a
post-production company in Germany. Kiesl is an animator, specialising
in 3-D. He's also the company chief executive. Hacker is a composer and
a 2-D compositing specialist. Together they directed "747s" (below), a
so-silly-it's-funny ad for Xbox. The spot opens with two pilots lining
up on the runway like boy racers at traffic lights. Mayhem ensues at the
airport and in the skies, before the winner screeches his plane to a
halt at the passenger dock. Cue wild high-fives from the winners and a
bitter yelp of "Scheisse!" from the losers. "Of course, you don't have
to speak German to get this," Myers sniggers.

Production company: Spy Films (Toronto)

SHANE ACKER - US

Acker says he was a hyperactive child but his mother didn't like the
idea of putting him on tranquillisers, so she gave him a set of drawing
materials instead. A sensible decision, it turns out. Two masters
degrees from UCLA (in Architecture and Animation) were followed by the
animated short film 9 (below). This earned Acker a gold medal at the
Student Academy Awards and a commission from Universal Pictures to make
it into a full-length feature film. 9 follows the adventures of a
creature (called number nine) struggling to survive in a oil-starved
world made of living, squeaking bits of rusting metal.

Production company: ICM (Beverly Hills)

SHARON COLMAN - UK

Inspired by her fear of nuclear weapons stored underground near her home
village on the shores of Loch Lomond in Scotland, Colman produced
Badgered (left), an animated tale of a tired old badger whose only wish
is to get some sleep. At first, a pair of rowdy crows keep him awake,
then his set is disturbed by the building of a nuclear storage facility.
The film's lolloping pace, gentle humour and soft colours give Colman's
sense of foreboding added weight, Myers observes. Badgered was Colman's
graduation piece from the National Film and Television School. It was
nominated for a student Oscar in 2005.

Production company: Tandem (London).