Director Evan Silver’s new tongue-in-cheek short delves into ad agency struggles to create fresh content during the quarantine. Silver not only directed but also wrote and edited the film–titled COVID-19 Brainstorm–which takes us to a Zoom session in which a creative director and his colleagues grapple with commercialmaking ideas for a trusted client.
Silver shared, “I noticed most of the new commercials airing recently have either been recycled brand footage or self-shot on a cellphone or over Zoom. With film production shut down, this makes sense. Our options to create new content have been extremely limited which unfortunately puts us all in the same creative boat. The struggle to push the creative while our hands are virtually tied behind our backs is painful. I thought it would be interesting to find the humor in all this madness.”
Silver reached out to David Abed, a talented actor and comedy star, to play the lead creative director. Silver filled out the cast with friends from the worlds of comedy, acting, and advertising––playing themselves.
Silver, an alum of SHOOT’s 2007 New Directors Showcase, added, “I ‘filmed’ the short over Zoom (ouch) and I spent a couple of weeks editing at home, whenever my quarantined 3 year old wasn’t on my lap with his guitar. The work/home struggle is real.”
CreditsCreative/Production Evan Silver, writer, director, editor. Cast David Abed, Charles Rossman, Sheree Shu, Dax Martinez-Vargas, Deanna Director, Rob Miller, Blake Scott, Liz Silver
The Best Work You May Never See: United Sense of America, Directing Duo rubberband. Hunt Down Assault Weapons In “The Fawn”
This PSA titled “The Fawn” is from United Sense of America, a bipartisan coalition whose mission is to turn common sense and common ground into public policy. “The Fawn” was concepted and created by production company SMUGGLER in partnership with New York-based agency American Haiku and Austin-based agency Preacher. Written by American Haiku ECD Thom Glover and directed by the SMUGGLER duo rubberband., the film was designed as a common sense rallying cry aimed at the hunting community, questioning the need for assault weapons--in hunting and beyond that in our society generally. In light of the recent tragic high school shooting in Georgia, this message takes on a poignant urgency and underscores the need to craft progressive reform policy. The film, painful and seemingly unavoidable, forces the viewer to imagine someone else’s finger on the trigger and something else as its target. A voiceover initially seems to be talking about a fawn who is in plain view. But instead the VO turns out to be referring to the weapon which will claim the animal’s life. While the scene itself is graphic, the messaging is matter of fact. United Sense of America contends there simply is no defensible reason or excuse for assault weapons being necessary for sports hunting--and certainly not in mainstream society which includes our children’s schools. Glover said, “Every line in the film came from online discussions and conversations. Hunters are no different from the rest of us; the way people buy assault weapons is the same as the way they buy a refrigerator. We have to find a way to challenge this situation that doesn’t paint all gun owners as monsters, because they’re not.” [video width="1920" height="1080"... Read More