Once upon a time, my short film was nominated for an MTV Movie Award. The internet was to determine the winner, so I made a series of popular internet spots to gather votes. To my great luck, an ad agency was watching and hired me to cut commercials & movie trailers for the likes of Michael Bay, Danny Boyle, Robert Rodriguez and every major movie studio (and video game company) in town.
17 years of working with such cultural trendsetters has trained me to tell stories, create emotions and sell products in a short running time. I continue to embrace these skills as a Director with clients like Bad Robot, Universal Pictures and Zerofriends apparel. SHOOT! Magazine listed me as part of the next generation of influential commercial directors.
My style can be defined in two categories: Dark Beauty and Fun Energy. See both below.
TV SPOT: IMPOSSIBLE REAPER
VIRAL AD: THE WINTER STALKER
Client: Zerofriends
These clients make really cute, macabre apparel (often seen in Hot Topic type stores) and thus I was tasked with making a scary and stylistic horror short with an adorable twist. I felt the piece needed some stylistic “punctuation marks,” so I built a giant pencil and strapped a crash test camera to a ceiling fan in order to pull off some special money shots. It worked, the spot went viral and perhaps we destroyed the childhood memories of people everywhere.
COMMERCIAL: HALLOWEEN KILLS - FACE THE SHAPE SHORT FILM
Clients: Universal Studios + Blumhouse + NR8R
This outside-the-box marketing piece for the latest Halloween film required a synthesis of 4 different clients (Universal, Blumhouse, the IP owner and the ad agency) and the delicate handling of a beloved horror brand. We only had a few hours on the Universal Backlot to pull it off and the nearby Jaws ride made things trickier as we would have to stop for robot shark induced explosions every 10minutes. We had to keep our team small (#Covid) so, to avoid additional hires, I volunteered to get killed as well.
COMMERCIAL: LONELY GUY
Client: Zerofriends
Our client, an egdy apparel company famous for work with major rock bands, had a wonderful grasp of what their customers respond well to: edgy, artistic and emotionally-charged content that mixes heartfelt humanity with fantastical elements. I decided that a fake documentary exploring alienation and loneliness was a great way to connect with the brand’s fans. I wrote a tragically human monolog and aimed the style towards a bleak mood to compliment the amazing actor’s performance. The spot went over well with both the client and the customers.
TV SPOT: STAR TREK - INTO BLOCKNESS
Client: Bad Robot + Hasbro + Paramount
JJ Abrams had an idea to both promote his new movie and sell its toys: Make a fun short film out of the Legos themselves, for this is the ultimate imagination fodder of every little kid, right? The problem: When he asked me to make this, I did not know how to stop motion animate. So, I forced myself to learn and luckily, it all clicked (clicked… get it? Legos? …) just in time. I spent months at Bad Robot making these things come to life (along with the CG wizardry of Industrial Light and Magic). Paramount bought entire commercial-break blocks to air this for the weeks leading up to the release of the film. It was a bold strategy to drop an entire short film as a nationally broadcast commercial, but it paid off!
COMMERCIAL CAMPAIGN: SHOW ME YOUR MUMU
The clients wanted a tone that portrayed the brand’s Boho Chic identity. I decided the answer was to be a little artsy and a little silly across all categories. We grabbed a jungle location, hired a parrot and, as a technique to keep things authentically fun, I set up little scenarios for our models to play in and filmed it.
VIRAL AD: THE LIFE-CYCLE OF A GOOD IDEA
Client: Juxtapoz Magaine
Juxtapoz Magazine hired me to make a short film that their readers (who are generally all struggling, passionate artists) could deeply relate to. What’s the common factor all creative people know all too well? It is that CREATION HURTS. But also, it’s fun and rewarding. And so, we landed on this metaphorically violent, quirky little expression of what it really feels like to make something you deeply care about. It was important that the emotional suffering of creation was portrayed visually, but equally so, a silly light hearted tone was important to balance it out. A few months after completing this project, they featured me in a multi-page article in the physical magazine. That was nice of them.
TV SHOW INTRO: UNDERCOVERS
Client: Bad Robot / NBC
JJ Abrams asked me to cook up a bunch of ideas to be the opening sequence of his new TV show. After landing on this (weirdly enough, because I thought the spinning spaceship from CONTACT would look cool as a wedding ring), we had VFX God Andrew Kramer (of Video Co-Pilot) render it in CG.
COMMERCIAL / POLITICAL PSA: ALIENS VS PREDATOR
Client: Zerofriends
A few years ago, some really weird government-mandated racial profiling stuff was going on in Arizona. While filming a different commercial, my client mentioned his company was down to donate to the MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund), a charity fighting the racial inequality yuckiness. Excited, I wrote up this wacky but meaningful satirical idea, shot it 2 days later and, hooray, we raised some good money with this insane little PSA. We fought absurdity with absurdity… absurdly.