A few tiny productions later, as the thrill faded, it was clear that the TV commercial world was thriving just fine without our great ideas.  Celia left to focus on her CBS career and Alan went back to editing titles and bumpers for daytime TV shows.  Having nowhere to go, I continued turning out low end spots believing that our equipment was to blame for the poor image quality. 

About a year down the road we had a small stroke of luck.  The jeans commercial craze descended on the world and suddenly everyone was denim crazy.  We were approached by a few companies including one from the Philippines looking to shoot in New York.  They offered us our highest budget to date.  I decided to take this opportunity to shoot on 35mm film with a good camera.  Here’s what happened… Our outdoor scenes shot at the exact right hour (it’s called “Golden Hour”) yielded acceptable results.  But when it came to indoor shooting our work was still nowhere close to the big spots. 

Eventually I needed to know what we were doing wrong.  I approached a friend at Grey Advertising who was a mid-level art director.  I asked her to be brutally honest.  What she told me defied everything I had known to that point.  She said, “it’s your lighting”.

Lighting?  We knew all about 3-point lighting!  After all Celia was an NYU Film School graduate and a network camera person.  She was taught how to light.  My next camera person after Celia was a School of Visual Arts graduate. He, too, was taught how to light.  My friend went on to explain that the lighting they teach in film courses isn’t close to the lighting used by major advertisers in commercials.  They demand directors to use cinematographers who are artists.  Back at that time a commercial cinematographer of any note made between $3,000 and $6,000 a day.  Although they added a lot to crew costs, they made the products look so much better and so much more impressive to the consumer.  Not only was the expense justifiable, it was essential.

I decided for our next production with a real budget to hire a cinematographer with big agency credentials.  Our break came when a national vitamin company hired us.  We budgeted for a real DP (Director of Photography). 

The shoot day was eye opening.  Lights were placed in counter-intuitive positions.  The light coming from every lamp was modified and bounced in ways I never imagined.  The gaffers and grips responded to the DP with an efficiency of motion I had never seen before on a set.  After screening the dailies fresh from the lab, we sat around in stunned silence.  There was a texture and vibrance to the footage I was completely unaccustomed to. This was the real deal!

On my next production I tried recreating the techniques I had learned by observing the cinematographer.  The results were beyond disappointing.  I still had a lot to learn.

Fortunately, the vitamin spot was very well received.  It opened agency doors that were previously impenetrable.  From then on, we took every opportunity to hire an assortment of top DP’s who specialized in different disciplines including hair, food, beauty and automotive.  Obsessed with the artistry of their techniques and reasoning behind their choices I would spend every spare moment applying what I had observed taking still photos with my own lights.

Eventually, on one multi-day shoot, the DP was only available for one day, I lit the scenes on the other days.  I felt confident in all my choices.  I was happy with everything I was seeing in the monitor and so was the client.

With rare exception, I’ve been the Director/DP ever since that shoot.  Today, we’ve become proficient at handling some of the toughest specialties like food, hair, beauty and automotive.

We strive to achieve a national look on every production.   We feel that it makes a big impact on the success of the project.